Modern Science has Proven that God Stastistically Exists

Christianity and Science are Amazingly Compatible

Scientific Statistical Analysis shows that no human could have composed Genesis 1

Modern science analysis has provided absolute statistical proof that God Exists.

This reasoning has absolutely nothing at all to do with the "beliefs" mentioned in the Bible. It
instead has to do with the modern scientific knowledge regarding when different events had
occurred, and the fact that a few sentences at the start of Genesis in the Bible happens to mention
those important events, such as the creation of fishes and trees and stars and animals and
mankind. For that very ancient text to have mentioned those events in the exact same order
which modern science now sees them provides overwhelming stastistical proof that no human
could have composed those references to those events. No one but God could have known those
details in that correct order.
If you were provided with fourteen names of sports, it would require beating odds of
87,178,291,200 to one to state the exact SEQUENCE of when they each first arose in history.
It is historically established that the text of Genesis 1 in the Bible was composed around 1275
BC due to reference to a Pharaoh's reign. Genesis 1 mentions fourteen events that occurred,
beginning with the creation of (star) light and ending with the arising of mankind, as Adam, in a
specific SEQUENCE. No human author could have gotten that sequence so correct, where it has
taken modern science an additional thirty-two hundred years to confirm it. Only God could
have known that sequence to provide it to the author of the text of Genesis 1.

In early 1967, I was an appropriately fanatical Physics student about logic at the University of
Chicago. I was then dating a wonderful girl, Cassie, who was equally fanatical about
Christianity. She never realized it but she caused me to develop a fascination about the First
Chapter of the First Book of the Bible, Genesis 1. I was intrigued at how "illogical" it seemed
for an ancient author to start a story with the idea that "Light" came before everything
else. And then a VERY brief mention of about fourteen "events", ending with the Creation of
man, as Adam. Again, ridiculously illogical for such an ancient author to leave man as last,
such that he could not have witnessed any of the amazing Creation claims. I wrote down
those fourteen events as a list on a sheet of paper. It happens that the University of Chicago has
a truly world-class Library. Without realizing it, my girlfriend caused me to spend much of the
following weeks in that Library, in searching for the time that modern science assigns to each of
the fourteen events.
Early on, I realized that modern science ALSO thinks that "light" came before anything
else, although they call it starlight, many billions of years ago. And Paleo-Biology thinks
that the arising of mankind actually came last of those fourteen events, only within the last
few million years. THIS was getting interesting! The two specific events which I had thought
Genesis 1 had presented in the most illogical order, now appeared to be in perfect agreement
with modern science, as regarding the SEQUENCE of when they happened.

As I methodically and logically wandered through the Library in the following weeks, I filled in
the rest of the scientific dates in the sequence. Grasses, plants, fishes, small land animals, larger
land animals, all fell into place in EXACTLY the same SEQUENCE that the 3300-year-old
Bible Genesis text had stated long ago.

As a logic-focused Physics student, I thought this was the most amazing coincidence ever!
As another amazing coincidence, my Physics Professors then began teaching us about Statistics
and Statistical Analysis. And so, suddenly, I was capable of doing a modern scientific analysis
of the two incredibly identical SEQUENCES that I was trying to comprehend. I fully realized
that these two sequences came from totally different sources, one from a religious environment
eight hundred years before the Greeks even invented what science and logic were, and the other
from the most advanced modern scientific knowledge there is today. I now understood that the
two sequences COULD NOT be so identical, without beating odds of 87,178,291,200 to one.
That evening, when I talked to my girlfriend, she could not understand why I was so excited!
We were sitting in a movie theater in downtown Chicago, watching the opening shorts before the
feature film. I vividly remember turning to her and telling her that "we had to leave". I
remember her being really confused and saying that the feature film had not even yet started.
And I said, "We have to find a Church, as I wanted to be Saved!" I don't think she ever really
understood what was going on, and I came to realize that she did not understand that I very
suddenly had realized that, absolutely logically, NO ancient human author could have composed
that exact sequence of events in Genesis 1, without direct assistance from the ONLY possible
source of that knowledge, God Himself.
I still remember shivering in excitement at suddenly understanding that.

Thirty-three hundred years ago, a story was told, Genesis 1. It was a brief
history of the world, and it included brief references to about fourteen very
different specific events. The events were mentioned in a very specific
order, a SEQUENCE. The story was told very briefly, with no details.
Moses told us in Genesis 1 that first, there was (star and sun) light. Later
the Earth was formed, and later still, grass plants came into existence, and
then herbs, and then fruit trees, and then fishes, and then small land
animals, then large land animals, and finally humans. (See Genesis 1 in the
(Bereshit) Bible, in the Original Paleo-Hebrew text.)

It took more than 3200 years before science developed enough, around AD 1900,
to confirm that Moses had been right, and not just right, but amazingly right!

Moses and the Bible had provided the correct sequence of those important events,
but it was only very recently that we have finally started to catch on and we now
know that same sequence through science!

See the humor in this? Moses had provided solid science, around 800 years before
the Greeks even invented science!

Well, no matter how smart Moses might have been, he could not possibly have
known that correct sequence! If Moses had tried to muddle through to produce
such a sequence, on his own, he would have had to select the correct sequence out
of 87,178,291,200 possible sequences! However, in Genesis 1 in the Bible, we see
the sequence as it has been taught for 3300 years, the correct sequence! I
personally take this as being solid evidence (Analytical, Statistical) that God
had to have Existed, in order to provide the correct sequence to Moses!

Footnote:

This reasoning has NOTHING to do with the beliefs of any modern religion or
Church, or of any of the 770,000 words in the rest of the Bible, or even in
any English translations of the original Paleo-Hebrew wording of the Bible. In
the rest of the Bible, there are certainly references to events that historians and
anthropologists say occurred. But those are different, either confirmation or
denial of SINGLE EVENTS. This discussion of Genesis 1 involves a SERIES of
events, presented in a particular SEQUENCE. It is the ONLY portion of ANY
ancient text which seems compatible with modern Scientific Analysis. Yes, the
even earlier Gilgamesh Epic seems to have a FEW events that might have
historicity, but nothing like the amazing sequence of events which begins the Bible.

Critics look at the text of their modern English language translation and find
criticism of this concept. Fine, but toward strict scientific accuracy, it is
important to ignore the modern translations and instead study the Paleo-Hebrew
Original text of the Bible. Some enthusiastic Christian translators have been
known to have made less-than-ideal selections of possible multiple translations. In
addition, a superficial look needs to have a more complete logic toward
understanding it. For examination, Genesis 1 SEEMS to refer to the Sun and Moon
as having appeared several Days after other events had occurred. But, how could
"Days" have even existed if the Sun did not already exist? My personal conclusion
about this matter involves that the early Earth had many constant volcanoes
erupting where the sky was forever heavily overcast with thick volcanic clouds.
Once the Earth's atmosphere settled down, the sky cleared, and the Sun and Moon
could then first be actually SEEN from the surface of the Earth. If the Sun is to
be denied existence just because we could not have seen it, then that suggests
that we would also have to deny any references to "end of the first Day" and so on
in the earlier text of Genesis 1. If the Sun truly did not exist, then it would have
been impossible for any distinction between Day and Night. However, with a heavy
overcast atmosphere due to all the volcanoes that we know existed, then day time
would have been lit up and night time would have been dark, much like during
stormy weather.

Different issue.

When the Bible was translated into English around four hundred years ago, the
translators were humans! They often had many possible choices of translations for
a word, a phrase or a sentence. Scholarly study of English Bibles shows that they
often made less than optimal choices (and so all scholarly study today requires
examination of the Original words, as with a Strong’s Concordance.)

Being humans, (and Christians), the translators made one specific choice of
translation which has turned out to be troublesome. They translated two Verses,
Genesis 1:26-27, to indicate that God's appearance is the same as ours is.
This apparent error, along with where it appears in that sequence referred to
above, has been the single source for extreme animosity of Christians regarding
science and scientists. During the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, European
painters such as Michaelangelo had created powerful paintings which sometimes
showed images of God, and viewers were all very impressed. So when the Bible
texts were later translated into English (around 400 years ago for the KJAV), the
translators had this (recent and popular, artistic) assumption in their minds.

Since the (Christian) translators therefore wanted to believe that we looked like
God, it is somewhat understandable that they stretched their translation to
suggest this situation. Prior to about four hundred years ago, it does not appear
that anyone thought in terms of "God Created Man in His Own Image (Gen 1:27)".
Many Bible scholars have now done more careful examination of the Original text
of those two Verses, which clearly suggests that the entire basis of the Creation-
evolution adversity is without any merit!

In fact, it seems clear that scientific study has helped Christianity regarding
resolving some difficult Verses, such as regarding the people who Cain went to live
with after leaving Eden, while the text of the Bible has provided Statistically
sound information which fully supports modern science. There appear to be no
directly contradictory ideas in the (original text of the) two!

These concepts were initially developed in notes in 1967, and then refined over the following 22 years to become this Essay by
February 1989. This presentation of the Essay was first placed on the Internet in July 1997.

Preface
My College Degree was in Theoretical Nuclear Physics. However, I happen to absolutely
believe that the (Original) Paleo-Hebrew literal wording of the Bible was exquisitely
correct, even including the reference to a Six-Day Creation! And I believe I can even prove
it, to a standard which modern science respects! I have been a Pastor of a small Christian
Church since 1996. (I am also still a highly respected Physicist!)
Like all modern Christian scholars, I acknowledge that there have been some minor errors /
changes which have occurred to those Bible texts after their Original composition. After all, the
words of Moses were first Transmitted by Oral Tradition for about three hundred years, until any
good written language was invented, including Paleo-Hebrew. Christian scholars now
generally believe that around five hundred years later, improved texts may have been composed
by Priests and Redactors. Another three hundred years later, it was found that virtually no one
could still read the Paleo-Hebrew texts of the Bible so it was all translated into the then popular
Greek (as the LXX or Septuagint). The Septuagint was later translated back into Hebrew in the
Aramaic language, which is probably the language that Jesus used. The New Testament was
initially Oral Tradition, but after maybe a hundred years, the documents of the NT were collected
as separate traveling collections of the Gospels and of the Letters. It was nearly another three
hundred years before Church leaders finally settled on the specific set of Books of the Bible
which we currently accept. Another hundred years later, Saint Jerome was dismayed that there
were so many different texts of the Bible being circulated that he translated it into Latin, as the
Vulgate Bible. During the Dark Ages of the following centuries, the vast majority of existing
copies of any of those translations vanished, and it was only due to diligence of Arabic scholars
where the Bible texts really persisted. Five hundred years later, a few European scholars
translated the Vulgate and any other translations they could find into English, and they were
usually gruesomely executed for doing it!
Another complication is that written documents tended to have short lifetimes before they
decayed and decomposed, so Scribes have had to make very precisely accurate copies of the
three million characters of an earlier Scribe of twenty years earlier of the Bible. Even though
those hundreds of copies of copies were made by heroically careful Scribes, it sometimes
happened that a tiny dot of one of those characters would get copied differently.
Massive work by thousands of Theologians and other Christian scholars over the past 200 years
seems to have found and corrected all of such later alterations. Also, the process of translating
any text from one language to another (now English for example) has the complication that most
words have multiple possible meanings and therefore translations, which causes some lack of
precision in the resultant modern English texts, where ALL scholars recommend regularly using
a Strong's Concordance to confirm translation accuracy. (THIS factor is primarily the reason
why there are KJAV and NIV and all the other English translations of the exact same Original
words of the Bible.)

Here is an obvious example, which many non-Christians often use to attack Christianity, and
which few Christians know how to defend. Within the first Five Books of the Bible (the
Pentateuch), where the text claims that Moses "wrote" them, near the very end there is a
reference describing the death of Moses, and what was done with his body! The attacks are
generally regarding how Moses could write a description of his own death! This is a great
example for Christians to study, as many seem to simply roll over and give up when confronted
by such a matter! They should have more Faith!
There are several related matters which should have received far more careful study long before
me! One is the fact that English language Bibles refer to "Moses wrote", and everyone today
simply has accepted that phrase as absolutely precisely true. First, the Ancient Hebrew word
involved was (Strongs 03789) kathab. The possible translations into English of that words does
include "write", but also available are "describe" and "recorded". Why is this important?
Because of when Moses lived! We have solid historical evidence that Moses lived around 1275
BC (because of when Pharaoh came to power in Egypt). We also have excellent historical
evidence that no actual "written language" had then yet been invented! Moses could not have
written down any texts at all! All civilizations and societies for thousands of years had
successfully used Oral Tradition to save and maintain all important knowledge. Moses clearly
used that Oral Tradition process in sharing the Lord's Words with others. In the two centuries
after Moses lived, seven major written languages were invented, in different parts of the world,
and developed. Interestingly, three of those seven languages have not even yet been deciphered!
The seven were Sumerian, Egyptian, proto-Elamite, proto-Indic, Cretan, Hittite, and Chinese.
Chinese was developed after Moses lived, and is the only one of them still in use today. The
three which have not yet been deciphered are Cretan, proto-Elamite and proto-Indic. Hittite was
also developed well after Moses lived. In any case, none of these became sophisticated written
languages until after Moses lived. (Virtually all modern written languages are variants of
Sumerian and Hittite.) And why is this important? Because, for many centuries, humanity had
successfully used Oral Tradition to pass all important knowledge along from each generation to
the next. This is known to have been an extremely effective and accurate method of maintaining
knowledge through many generations, in many different early cultures. In this case, Moses must
certainly have orally presented the text of the First Five Books of the Bible. Among other
things, he did not have either the time or the thousands of stone blocks to even try to chisel
Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols into stone, while he was occupied in trying to keep his followers
alive! Additionally, Egyptian hieroglyphs were a symbolic system, which was not able to
express many things (such as love) or virtually any concepts (such as "Honor the Sabbath").
So the known historical evidence seems to indicate that the words of Moses were orally
transmitted for around 15 generations, probably with exquisite accuracy. Written Ancient
Hebrew had been developed sufficiently where Moses' words could finally be recorded as
written text, around 1000 BC. There seems even to be some evidence this had all occurred, from
within the Bible itself. If you carefully read the text of Genesis 6 and 7, as an example, it is clear
that each event seems to be described twice, where the precise descriptions are sometimes
slightly different. For example, Genesis 6:19-20 describes two of each creature for the ark,
while Genesis 7:2-3 seems to refer to seven pairs of many animals and birds. Now, which of
those two descriptions were actually said by Moses, no one knows, but this seems to suggest that
the first Scribes wanted to make sure that they did not leave out a correct description, and so
Genesis has every appearance of being an inter-threaded pair of descriptions. That situation
may easily have arisen from that 15 generations of Oral Transmission. By 1000 BC, there might
easily have been two slightly different oral transmissions of Moses' words being spread, and the
written Bible necessarily includes both. Note that the precise number of how many animals were
taken into the ark does not appear to affect any Lesson of the Lord, in other words, an apparently
very minor variation in one or the other of two parallel Oral Traditions.
Now, given these amazingly slight effects due to oral transmission, I find it easy to have
absolute trust in the words Moses actually spoke, while recognizing that the words that got
written down in Ancient Hebrew nearly 300 years later MIGHT have contained very minor flaws
or alterations. Specifically, I think it very realistic to think that one of those oral
transmitters might have felt it appropriate to add a brief comment about the death of
Moses. It is even noteworthy that the references to Moses' death come at the very end of
Deuteronomy, and NOT in the middle of any important text. To imagine that an Oral transmitter
might have chosen to mention the specifics of the death of Moses seems quite natural to me.
The point here is that where many Christians seem to quickly concede their Faith to any apparent
adversary, I say NO! As a Christian Minister for 15 years and also a Theoretical Nuclear
Physicist for far longer, I have long examined both sides of such subjects, and I have total faith
that the Lord Knew what He was doing when He created this Universe! When WE humans find
things that we cannot easily understand, my suspicion is that we just have not been smart enough
to understand the subtleties that He provided for our benefit.

More Centrally
Item 1
The text of Genesis 1 of the Bible mentions a number of specific events in a specific sequence.
The first one mentioned is that Light was Created. The final one was that Humanity (Adam) was
Created. The Creation of grasses, herbs, larger plants, fishes, simple animals, larger animals and
more are mentioned in between. The sequence of the events mentioned seems to be very
important!
IF God did not Exist, then Moses or whoever else composed the text of Genesis 1, 3300
years ago, somehow found the one true sequence of the 14 events mentioned there (in the
Original Ancient Hebrew text) out of 87,178,291,200 possible sequences! (Statistics of
Genesis 1 - Scientific Approach, the statistical reasoning.) No human could have done that! This
actually is solid scientific, statistical proof that God had to Exist! (He had to Exist in order to
provide the information in order for Moses to get the sequence of those events correct!) Even
science did not know most of that actual sequence until in just the past 100 years! (Prior to about
one hundred years ago, there was no one on Earth who seriously believed that "light" came into
existence before EVERYTHING else! However, modern science now knows that was the case.)
This presentation includes an extensive analysis of both the scientific evidence and the
Genesis reference (KJAV) to each of those events, which shows that they appear to be in
(nearly) PERFECT HARMONY with each other! Sequential Analysis of Genesis 1 and science
And the harmony is FAR too perfect for any human to have faked the writing of Genesis 1!

Item 2
A rather simple and even obvious resolution may exist regarding the century-long adversity
between Christianity and modern science! It does not even require either side to "give up"
anything at all! There is a single Scripture that needs to be very carefully examined (Genesis
1:26-27, discussed shortly below), regarding its actual meaning, which might be slightly
different than what we modern Christians have generally assumed. Christians ASSUME that
Genesis 1:26-27 refers to a PHYSICAL resemblance of humans with God, but there is no actual
evidence that it actually implies that! Actually, think about it! Unless God Lives somewhere
where He would have to eat food, He might not need a MOUTH at all! And even if He Lived
somewhere where there was air which He had to breathe (which seems highly unlikely for an
All-Powerful Being), exactly WHO would He ever talk to regarding needing a mouth? So God is
not likely to need or therefore have either a nose or a mouth. Probably the same is true of ears,
isn't it? And what would He need with legs, since it seems unlikely that an All-Powerful Being
would ever need to walk anywhere? Or arms, as He would likely have far better ways of moving
objects than having to pick them up and carry them? So, whatever physical appearance God
might have, many of OUR characteristics seem totally unnecessary! Humanity has certainly
Anthropomorphized God into Someone who resembles US! And THAT was certainly done
based on the poor translation of Genesis 1:26-27.
Instead, it seems far more logical that Genesis 1:26-27 refers to the fact that God installed a
SOUL in Adam, an addition that DID cause humans to resemble God and to be unique
among His Creatures. (A Soul happens to be something that modern science cannot detect or
study, and so therefore cannot have any opinion about, positive or negative.)
This matter is also extensively discussed in this presentation.
These two issues seem to provide SOLID EVIDENCE that Christianity and modern science
are actually in EXCELLENT AGREEMENT about EVERYTHING! Things like the
Creation/evolution mess seem to have arisen because of INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS (on
both sides).

Item 3
There is actually a third resulting matter here. There are numerous critics who are familiar with
the children's game of telephone, where each child whispers in the ear of the next child and an
initial story is entirely different just minutes later as told by the last child. The critics express
sometimes vicious attacks on the Bible for therefore having no credibility, since the information
presented to us in the Bible clearly had to pass through an immense number of transmitters
before it was able to be published after 1454 AD due to the Gutenberg printing press. Such
attacks have always been hard to defend against, due to the paucity of actual facts regarding the
accuracy of the Bible.
More specifically, when Moses lived (around 1275 BC, known from Egyptian records of
Pharaoh accession), no written language had then yet been invented. Only picture-based records
such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs then existed, and they were not remotely sophisticated enough to
express concepts such as "Honor the Sabbath". So there was then a period of nearly 300 years
where Moses' words had been transmitted by Oral Tradition (around 15 generations) without any
written texts. Once Ancient Hebrew (or Paleo-Hebrew) was invented (roughly 1000 BC) it was
quickly found that the texts had to be copied by Scribes about every twenty or thirty years, due to
the written documents decomposing and disintegrating over time. And so the Ancient Hebrew
(written) texts of Moses' words had to be copied, at least 40 times, each from the texts of the
Scribes a generation before them, until the entire Ancient Hebrew text was translated into Greek
in the Septuagint Bible (around 200 BC). Then THAT Greek text also had to be copied by
Scribes, until that Greek language text was translated back into Hebrew, but now into Aramaic, a
rather different form than the earlier Ancient Hebrew.
THIS was the form that Jesus read and studied. But Saint Jerome found that by around 400 AD,
there were many variants of the Bible circulating (both in Greek and Aramaic and in other
languages) that Jerome collected and carefully studied all of those variants, and he created a
Vulgate Bible, in Latin. We still heavily count on Jerome's scholasticism regarding the accuracy
of the Vulgate text, even today.
But the point here is that there had been about 20 more generations of Scribes copy the Bible text
to get to Jerome, and that another 50 generations of Scribes copied it to get to the Gutenberg
printing press.
These many, many COPYINGS of the Bible all involved around 770,000 words or around
3,000,000 individual letters which had to be copied absolutely precisely. The "telephone" logic
might have seemed to have had validity!
However, now consider that Moses' text of Genesis 1 included that SEQUENCE of events of
Creation, and even after the many generations of Oral Tradition and then even more generations
of Scribe copyings, the SEQUENCE which got included in the early published Bibles IS STILL
THE SAME AS WHAT MOSES HAD TO HAVE FIRST STATED!
This is a rather monumental fact! The amazing care and accuracy of the 140 or more individuals
who each had to memorize and repeat (either Orally or by copying letter symbols) is
impressively confirmed, by the fact that even the SEQUENCE of the Genesis 1 events was never
altered!
One might think that NO Oral Tradition carrier or Scribe copier would have seen much
importance in making sure that "Light" was the very first element of Creation! It seems like such
an irrelevant issue, doesn't it? Or more, that NONE of those 140 or more transmitters CHOSE to
try to "improve" the sequence by changing it around to become more "credible". NONE of those
people ever did that, even regarding the apparently irrelevant details of fish being Created before
land animals or plants before fishes.
The fact that we NOW can see such amazing (statistical) matching of the sequence of Genesis 1
and what modern science has learned, really is an impressive testament to the strict accuracy of
Bible texts!
Is that absolutely and precisely true? Not quite. Massive study by Christian and other religious
scholars have compared around 20,000 hand-written Manuscripts which have been discovered,
and some very minor copying errors have been discovered (and corrected). Such errors were
generally due to a Scribe not copying a tiny dot above or below a letter in the source text. Even
this is impressive when it is remembered that around 3,000,000 characters had to be copied by
each Scribe to pass the Bible along to the next generation. The fact that SO FEW copyist
mistakes have been found also attests to their care and the accuracy of the copy which they
generated.
The main point being made here is that the "telephone game" is not remotely applicable to the
Bible texts. And by implication, if Genesis 1 always got copied so very accurately, then the rest
of the Bible text must certainly have also come to us in an extremely accurate form.
An interesting point to make is that we would NOT know this about how amazingly well the
Bible has always been copied, if it were not for modern science now being able to provide a
CONFIRMATION of the sequence of events in Genesis 1!

There is a famous African folk tale that seems useful here! It is sometimes referred to as Red Hat
/ Green Hat. The story generally has two very dear friends, Kendi and Upendo, in casual
conversation one day. A woman farmer who was a familiar friend to both happened to walk by,
passing BETWEEN the two of them. After she has passed, the two shifted the conversation to
the woman. One mentioned that she was wearing a very attractive hat. The other agreed,
mentioning that the hat was a beautiful green color. The first then confirmed their deep
friendship, but corrected his dear friend regarding it being a beautiful RED colored hat!
The story continues, where the two continue the conversation which quickly degrades into an
argument, and soon even into rather vicious statements by both regarding the eyesight and the
sanity of the other. BOTH saw the FACTS as absolutely clear and obvious, and neither could
comprehend how the other could be so blind or so stupid as to believe what he had claimed!
Their friendship was essentially ending! They were developing such terribly bad feelings and
attitudes toward each other that their previous many years of dear friendship seemed no longer to
matter!
THIS is like the point at which Christianity and modern science seems to now be! The FACTS
are UNQUESTIONABLE to each side. How could the OTHER side possibly believe what they
do? They must be absolute idiots or they are trying to be deceptive. Since Christians tend to
worry that Satan is forever trying to mislead them, it seems almost obvious that many Christians
would ASSUME that modern science was simply an activity of the Devil! What else COULD
they believe, when science keeps saying things that seem to be so incompatible with everything
they believe? But worse, there are many Christians who see the impressive logic in much of what
modern science does and says, AND SO THEY DILUTE THEIR BELIEF IN CHRISTIANITY
AS A RESULT OF ACCEPTING SOME OF WHAT SCIENCE TELLS THEM!
It turns out that BOTH of those reactions are very wrong! Consider how the African folk tale
continues! At a point where the two men have gotten to the most vicious of attitudes toward each
other, the woman happens to return. This time, she is walking the other direction, but again
between them. The two men each see her hat, but now they each see the OPPOSITE color from
what they had known to be true before! In their confusion, they stop her to talk, and they then
BOTH realize that she is wearing a hat WHICH IS RED ON ONE SIDE AND GREEN ON THE
OTHER!
In the African folk tale, there is a happy ending! We in Christianity and modern science are NOT
there yet! But this presentation is meant to provide some suggestions and evidence where we
might now proceed to a better mutual understanding.

A careful examination of the first Chapter of Genesis, regarding the SEQUENCE of the (14)
events mentioned, provides amazing evidence! There is NO possible way that any minimally
educated (by modern standards) human writer of 1275 BC (even Moses) could have known that
LIGHT came into existence before anything else! Modern science did not know that until just in
the past 100 years or so! Or that mankind arose AFTER all the other events mentioned! Modern
science didn't know that either until in the most recent 100 years. Or that fishes were before all
land animals, or that plants were before any animals at all. A human author of Genesis 1 would
have had to beat odds of around 87 billion to one (in mathematics, called 14 factorial) to have
selected (guessed) the sequence presented in Genesis 1. Yet, in just the past hundred years,
science has advanced to the point of discovering that light actually DID come first and man
WAS last and all the rest! The SEQUENCE that modern science has discovered during the
past 100 years is essentially EXACTLY the same sequence as Genesis 1 provided 3300
years ago! From a strict logical perspective, this provides scientific STATISTICAL PROOF that
Genesis 1 could ONLY have been written with the direct help of God Himself! No one else at
the time KNEW the sequence! (A complete and thorough analysis of this is included below.)
AND, there seems to even be PROOF that the concepts of Biblical Creation and scientific
evolution are totally compatible with each other! More, they even seem to SUPPORT each
other!

As a Christian Minister, I am often amazed that nearly all Christians seem to be unaware of
WHY they are so disrespectful and even hateful to science and scientists! With that much
disrespect, they (with a few exceptions) make an active point to never even LISTEN to anything
that science discovers! I encourage all Christians to look into these very important subjects! They
might be somewhat different than you think!
As a first step, it is important for each person to get the facts and logic straight! It is astounding
that thousands of Christian Ministers make the silliest and most foolish statements in trying to
insult modern science! Just today, I saw a TV Minister laughingly say that he hasn't seen a
Mammoth turn into a turkey. No kidding! If he was less ignorant, or if he had actually TRIED to
understand what modern science knows to be true, he would have never spread such a ridiculous
insinuation to a television audience. NO SCIENTIST has ever remotely believed what he
claimed! Specifically, NO animal has EVER CHANGED INTO any other animal! The Theory
of Evolution is actually a very simple and rather obvious observation that the CHILDREN
of any person or animal or plant are NOT PRECISELY IDENTICAL TO THE PARENT.
This is a simple and common occurrence in EVERY GENERATION of EVERY animal,
plant and human.
There ARE a few exceptions to this statement. There are actually different methods of
reproduction, and a few plants and animals can propagate from a single parent, where they then
can have identical DNA as the parent. Such plants and animals are relatively rare, and we will
continue to discuss here the far more common method of propagation that TWO humans or
animals or plants must interact to produce unique new DNA which is the basis for the
development of the individual of the next generation.
You probably notice that many of the adult men in your family are over six feet tall. Five
generations ago in YOUR family, there was probably not a single man over six feet tall. There
are people who try to claim that is due to better food, but think about that! Sure, better food can
make people stronger and heavier, but how could it make them TALLER? How could it make
their BONES become longer? The GRADUAL increase in height in your own family,
SOMETHING THAT IS NOT EVEN NOTICEABLE IN ANY INDIVIDUAL GENERATION,
is what is called an evolutionary trend. There was no sudden or spectacular change in any one
person, BUT INSTEAD A VERY GRADUAL AND NEARLY IMPERCEPTIBLE TREND
OF DIFFERENCE OVER SEVERAL OR MANY GENERATIONS. THAT is what
scientific evolution actually is. And if you continue that to more than the five generations that
you may be aware of in your own family, those gradual trends can have CUMULATIVE
EFFECTS. A really obvious example is that many fossils have been found of the eohippus, a
horse from around 55 million years ago which closely resembled modern horses but were only
about the size of modern dogs. Did a 40-pound eohippus suddenly one day explode into a
modern 1200-pound horse? What a foolish thought! No, there have been around 20 million
generations of horses between the original eohippus and what modern horses have evolved into,
the far larger animals we know. SOME (but not all) generations of eohippus were apparently a
tiny bit bigger than their parents were. NOT to any noticeable amount, but if you repeat that
TREND around 20 million times, yes, modern 1200-pound horses might be the result.
Many of the vicious (and ignorant) Ministers who try to insult modern science make another
nasty comment with a smile or a laugh. They make a definitive statement that NO EXAMPLE
OF EVOLUTION HAS EVER BEEN SEEN TO HAVE ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Those are
more Ministers who are simply showing themselves to be ignorant! In addition to the height
example actually seen in generations of humans, there are examples which show up in the news
every week! There is an extremely deadly version of TB (tuberculosis) now spreading around the
world for which there are NO medicines. In the news, it is called multiple-drug-resistant TB.
Thirty years ago, TB was virtually eradicated world-wide. Unfortunately, a few microscopic
viruses survived. The only reason they survived is that those very few TB viruses happened to be
resistant to all of the medicines which had killed off all the other TB viruses. Those very few that
had survived "had a survival advantage" over all the other TB viruses, which created a situation
which Charles Darwin called "the survival of the fittest". Those TB viruses of thirty years ago
were not stronger or bigger than the others, but they happened to have a single difference
which was a tremendous advantage for them, the resistance to the drugs doctors were then
using against them. Did the TB viruses PLAN it that way? No. It's just that any large population
of any type of living things have VARIATIONS among them, and it just happened that a FEW of
those old TB viruses happened to have the needed chemical and biological resistances to survive.
And, quietly, while modern medicine had dismissed TB as forever gone, those FEW TB viruses
have been multiplying. They are now again everywhere on Earth. This WILL be in the news a lot
in coming years, because this new TB is absolutely untreatable by any known medicines or
treatments. When Doctors or Nurses get infected with it, they have always been dying, along
with all the patients. This is incredibly bad, and it is ENTIRELY due to the viruses evolving.
As a College Biology student, I was required to do many experiments with fruit flies (Drosophila
Melanogaster). These are the very tiny flies which appear in your kitchen if you leave any rotten
fruit out for a day or two. The experiments were to expose a population of those tiny flies to
some different environmental condition, such as heat, cold, wet, dry, light, darkness, the presence
of any of many metals or other materials, the presence of any of many types of radiation, the
presence of Classical music or Rock music, etc. And then, if any of your flies were still alive
after a few days, they were fed and allowed to multiply (which happens very quickly, the actual
reason that they are used for such simple experiments.) Many such experiments killed all of the
flies. But some experiments, especially when various forms of radiation were involved, resulted
in very strange flies which had extra wings or eyes or legs, but then could not reproduce so they
also died off. But some lesser variations would sometimes result in flies that could reproduce,
and then your experiment would soon have a large population of flies that were all blind or that
had extra legs or wings! All in a few weeks! And purely and completely due to evolutionary
trends.
In any case, it is important that a Christian reader understand these basic facts about what
evolution or Natural Selection is, rather than the fear-mongering rants that many Ministers
manage to sell. You are ENCOURAGED to confirm or deny any of the above from any
Encyclopedia or other reliable resource! We can now proceed with the current discussion!
I will briefly describe here what I see as the INITIAL reason why Christianity became so
adversarial to science. (a) Christians believe the Bible, which includes that mankind was Created
(Genesis 1:26-27) uniquely and separately from all of God's earlier "creatures". English language
translations of the Bible generally include a reference to humans having a physical appearance
resembling God. (b) Science includes attempts at logical understandings of all things, and that
includes a "natural selection" which is popularly referred to as "evolution". (c) These two are
seen as absolutely incompatible, especially by Christian leaders, because one insists that man
was Created unique and the other suggests that man is not, being just sort of an "advanced
creature". Since Christians insist on believing the one, the other must then be dead wrong! End
of discussion. Start of argument, or at least, deaf ears!
IF this is the reasoning behind YOUR negative attitudes toward science, I have some really good
news for you! The conflict that you see is actually the result of an assumption that some
(English-speaking) Christians made long ago and still do, primarily due to the English
translations of the Bible, that is probably incorrect! And once that is straightened out,
there is NO remaining problem at all!
It seems extremely likely that the Original (Ancient Hebrew) wording of Genesis 1:26-27 is
accurate. Even the early English translations, including the King James (KJAV) had "Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness" but that this English translation (and all other
translations) have incorporated a translation assumption that may not be appropriate. The actual
Original wording, transliterated, is just four Ancient Hebrew words, "`asah 'adam tselem
d@muwth" (Strong's O6213, O120, O6754, and O1823).
Each of those Original Ancient Hebrew words has an assortment of possible meanings. It is
certainly true that it CAN be interpreted in the way it always has, of regarding a "physical
resemblance" of humans to the Lord. However, the third and fourth Hebrew words have the
possible meaning of "resemblance" or "similitude". There seems no reason to believe that we
must PHYSICALLY resemble God. This Essay is based on a different understanding of this
specific Scripture, that the "resemblance" referred to is that of us uniquely "having a
Soul". (No other creature does!) This small change makes an enormous consequence!
In other words, maybe God had arranged all the plants and animals, but then when it came
time to Create humans, He chose AN EXISTING HUMAN-LIKE CREATURE, AND
ADDED A SOUL. That action on the part of God made humans absolutely unique, and
"resembling Him" (regarding having a Soul) in a unique way where none of His animals ever
had or could! It also would have meant that there were CREATURES around that LOOKED like
humans but did not have Souls, possibly explaining the population which Cain joined after
having left Eden. Many entries in the early Bible seem to make a lot more sense with this
interpretation in mind, such as the circumstances which led to the Flood, and many other Verses
that have always seemed rather cryptic otherwise.
Nothing is really changed at all in Christian or Jewish Theology by this adjustment.
However, it immediately makes clear what the unique feature of man is, of having a Soul, a fact
that is clearly not applicable to any of God's other creatures. This simple adjustment then
enables Christianity to be entirely compatible with the scientific findings regarding Natural
Selection, or what is more popularly referred to as Evolution. Prior to man at Genesis 1:26-
27, God may have Chosen to use genetic evolution to advance His many creatures. Man might
therefore actually have been genetically preceded by the animals mentioned earlier in Genesis 1,
but in Genesis 1:26-27, God made man absolutely unique by implanting a Soul in every
man and woman. (At least all the men and women who are descendants of Adam and Eve, a
subject for discussion below regarding the "people" that Cain met when he left Eden, who may
have not been "people" at all but merely creatures which appeared to be people!) There are an
immense number of things that seem to become clear with this new insight. It now seems quite
clear as to HOW and WHY our human DNA is so remarkably similar to that of many animals
and especially some primates. And why, forty years ago, a serious effort (in Ohio, I think) was
advancing to raise thousands of apes exclusively to create blood for transfusions in serious
human operations, as their blood is essentially indistinguishable from ours. See how these sorts
of things can now perfectly fall into place?
By the way, God might have ACTUALLY done all of Creation in Six actual Days, but He was
very careful to make sure that later (inquisitive) humans would find comfort in a Natural
Selection (logical) explanation for all of it, where all evidence that could ever be found would all
indicate that many billions of years were involved. Conversely, He may have been Patient
enough to allow the Universe to take 14 billion years to proceed to where it now is, but Felt it
necessary to present a Six-Day explanation for primitive minds of 3300 years ago, and also to
very much impress everyone with His immense power and abilities! Yet again, He May have
taken three seconds to do it all, or a month, and CHOSE to Create a Universe which is perfectly
logical to researchers and scientists and also religiously compelling to everyone. No one can ever
know exactly how much time He took! Of course, no one had a watch anyway, and at first, even
the Earth and Sun did not exist, so the concept of time probably had limited importance anyway!
With this slight adjustment in interpretation, all of Christian belief and all of modern
science come completely into accord! In other words, Genesis 1 describes EQUALLY either
the Six-Day Creation or the far longer sequence of events that science has discovered, without
suggesting preference for either of those two interpretations. Since science has no way to detect
or study a Soul, the single issue that distinguishes the two views is then securely retained by
Christians and Jews.
We will discuss later a reasonable explanation for the very different perceptions of time intervals
and we will see that they can be compatible with each other.

For (many) Christians, the Creation description in Genesis 1 is therefore EXACTLY what
happened. However, for true scientists, an incredibly long and complex description is certain to
be essentially true. Given these two statements, we find that arguments occur when a person with
one of those perspectives tries to look at issues inside the other perspective. The two groups have
very different perspectives, but they are actually describing the very same SEQUENCE of
events! Science can actually statistically prove that Genesis 1 had to have the assistance of God!
Below, an example is presented of an English-only-speaking person criticizing things like the
correct usage of the Russian word Nyet in some text. It is certain that a Russian-speaking person
could quickly and easily judge if the usage is correct or not, but how could the English-only-
speaking person make such a judgment, without profoundly understanding the "perspective" of
the Russian language? If the English-only-speaking person made a criticism because a Russian
sentence did not have a syntax that was according to English language rules, it would be an
empty and foolish criticism. Ditto, in the other direction.
Noted above, in the discussion which follows, only one major understanding is seen differently
than has previously been done. Genesis 1:26-27 includes (KJAV) "And God said, let US make
man in our image, after our likeness". The NIV and other English translations are all very
similar. ALL believers seem to assume this as meaning that our PHYSICAL APPEARANCE is
like God's. The actual Ancient Hebrew word (tselem) can mean "resemblance" and there is not
any actual implication that it is a PHYSICAL resemblance. This discussion makes a different
conclusion from that Verse, in that the resemblance referred to is much MORE important
that simply LOOKING like God, but is instead regarding man as HAVING A SOUL (like
God). If you think about it, isn't THAT a really important distinction that God would have
wanted to make? One a lot more important than whether we look like Him or not? The Bible
reads perfectly reasonably and logically with this understanding, but it then also permits
"intimate agreement" between Christian beliefs and scientific research.
Many people have also noted that for the most recent five hundred years, humans have LOVED
to Anthropomorphize God. There seems a fascination in imagining God with human form! But
WHY would that actually be the case? Does God live on some planet like ours where He would
need hands and feet? That seems very unlikely. Is he on some planet which has an oxygen
atmosphere? If not, would He even need lungs? Would He need to eat, or even talk (to who?), so
would He even need a mouth. Or nose? Or ears? Get the point? WHY would Genesis 1:26-27
need to refer to a PHYSICAL RESEMBLANCE? It wouldn't. However, it WOULD be
important that Genesis 1:26-27 make clear that Mankind was UNIQUE in HAVING A SOUL,
just like He does!
It seems to me that most Christians underestimate the Lord! Few seem anymore to be
willing to believe where the Bible says that the Lord Created everything in Six Days, because
they have been influenced by scientific research that discusses billions of years! As a Christian
Church Pastor, I happen to believe the WHOLE Bible and so I do not question the Six-Day
Creation. I imagine God as being extremely busy during those Six Days! However, it happens
that I was educated as a Nuclear Physicist, and I recognize that science is on solid logical ground
regarding the Universe being around 15 billion years old. What gives???
I think the resolution is really simple! I believe that the Lord is billions of times smarter than any
of us people, so we probably can never totally comprehend His Plan for us. However, I believe
that He is Loving and Considerate regarding us. And so, even though, given His Infinite Power,
He Created everything in Six Days, He knew our curiosity and desire to "logically understand"
everything, and so He Wonderfully provided a totally separate and nearly independent "scientific
perspective" for us to find (3300 years later) totally logical comfort in. So, when I personally
consider religious issues, ONLY the Christian perspective has reliable meanings, but when I
study scientific subjects, ONLY the scientific perspective might have reliable meanings.
In fact, He arranged everything so well that we cannot even tell which of the two
understandings is actually the one that really occurred! If a person wants to trust "solid
logic", NO terminal flaw can be found in a scientific star-formation / earth-oceans-land / plants-
fishes-animals-man line of reasoning! However, if a person is willing to set aside some
seemingly logical rules (regarding time) and purely accept what the Bible tells us, then NO
terminal flaw can be found in that either! A critical issue in this is that the SEQUENCE of
events MUST be the same in both views, even if the time scales seem outlandishly different.
When I was a teenager, before I was Saved, I became intrigued by the fact that Genesis begins
with LIGHT. What an odd first thing to Create! But there it is! And then it dawned on me that
according to the best scientific evidence, before the Earth and everything else, there were stars,
millions and billions of stars. Light. Hmmmm!
And then when I looked at the end of Genesis 1, the LAST event of Creation was mankind,
which ALSO happens to be the most recent major event in a scientific time scale. This was
getting very interesting! When I wrote down a list of the 14 specific events I felt I saw mentioned
in Genesis 1, in order, I was astounded to find that all but the birds were in EXACT
AGREEMENT with the order currently understood by science! (As a Nuclear Physics student, I
knew enough to know that the statistical odds of that just being a coincidence was far over a
billion to one!) (the matching of the sequences is included in this Essay.)
In any case, that started me on a life-long effort at trying to understand how Genesis/Creation
could be totally correct and ALSO that science (including evolution) could also be totally
correct. After all, I was on both sides of that street! I have seen others present what seem to be
"rationalizations" in trying to describe how Christianity and science can be mutually tolerated.
Such arguments always seemed to me to require a watering-down of some aspects of Christian
belief and/or a watering-down of the strictness of logic in scientific study, and therefore I always
found them wanting. Because my life was intimately involved in both Christianity and in
science/Nuclear Physics, I felt I needed more than that, if I were to feel that I was not letting one
or the other or both down!
This eventually resulted in this "parallelism" Essay which attempts to explain how EACH can be
totally and absolutely true, within its own realm, even though there APPEAR to be
overwhelming conflicts BETWEEN the two viewpoints. Again, I personally truly believe that
the Lord Created everything in Six Days, but His Compassion for us caused Him to also provide
us a perfectly logical view of everything which seems to involve many billions of years! But I
am aware that He might actually have needed billions of years, or two months, or any other
interval of time, to do all of Creation. I see this as evidence of the amazing Love He has for us!
And NEITHER of these perceptions is any "deception" to us, because they are EACH perfectly,
absolutely, totally, and independently true.
By the way, my initial fascination regarding Light being first seems to have another wonderful
result. Say that the Bible was NOT inspired by the Lord, that some ancient human composed it
(just considering Genesis 1). In sitting down to weave a story that needed to mention 14 distinct
events, would any human writer claim that Light was first, if he wanted ANYONE to actually
believe his story? Not a chance! He might have woven many different fake stories, but I do not
think any of them would have begun with Light being Created first! And now, 3300 years later,
science has come to AGREE that Light actually existed before anything else. Isn't that
SCIENTIFIC PROOF that the Bible had to have been inspired by the Lord? It was composed
around 3,300 years ago, given to Moses, and even just a hundred years ago, there was no
scientist on Earth who yet realized that light existed first! There is NO way that any ancient
human could have written Genesis 1, without God's help! When we consider that 14 specific
events were mentioned, and we now scientifically realize that all but one are in the exact correct
sequence, whoa! That alleged human writer would have had 87,178,291,200 different storyline
sequences to pick from! Yet, the sequence presented in Genesis 1 amazingly matches what
modern science has discovered. I personally consider it to be intensely compelling SCIENTIFIC
EVIDENCE that the Bible (at least Genesis 1) could only have been written with God's help. In
other words, scientific proof that at least part of the Bible is reliable and valid. Even that God
had to actually exist in order for Genesis 1 to have been written as it is.
Based on that statistical analysis of the actual events mentioned in Genesis 1, I really do not see
how any logical, scientific person could deny that God had to have existed at that time, in order
to provide that specific sequence of events. People might certainly question many other parts of
the Bible, but this really is pretty close to "airtight" from a scientific logic perspective!

Traditional Christian belief and modern scientific research ARE fully compatible! Even for
Fundamentalist Christians and strict analytical scientists on difficult areas like the origin of
mankind and the fact that ONLY man has a Soul! Even for the passionate debate over
Creationism versus evolutionism! Neither side has to "concede" ANY of its values or beliefs!
This new perspective offers an explanation where BOTH sides are absolutely and totally correct
in every detail! Nearly all of the numerous subjects of controversy and apparent inconsistencies
between the two camps evaporate as a result!
Amazingly, science may even provide logical explanations for some things that have always
been troublesome to Christians, like where Cain went when he left Eden, and who he married!
If a human author had written Genesis 1 without God's help he could have listed the 14 events
mentioned in over 87 billion different sequences. How could he have selected the sequence,
beginning with Light first and Man last, which has now (3300 years later) been shown to be the
sequence that modern science finally accepts?

From the Christian perspective, there is a tremendous benefit from this new "parallel" pair of
understandings of life and the Universe. Rather than having His people coming to rely more and
more on facts and logic and science, God designed His religion to be based on Faith. Christianity
always has been that way! Logical people have always needed to make a sort of "leap of Faith"
to truly embrace a Christianity that appears to have some illogical aspects. This is important! If
God had arranged everything so that some day, science will absolutely PROVE everything, then
Faith will have become irrelevant. The whole concept of Salvation will entirely change, from one
of spiritual commitment and Faith, to one of cold logic. In this case, belief in the Lord's Sacrifice
for us would become virtually meaningless. God would never have created a Universe where that
was an end result.
This current Parallelism perspective is that there are two perfectly parallel understandings of
existence, that of Christian Faith and that of analytical science, that are INDEPENDENTLY each
absolutely true and complete and self-consistent. Trying to mix "facts" between them can appear
to cause incompatibilities, but either alone represents a perfect and correct and complete
view of the world.
A useful analogy involves language skills. Let's say you speak fluent English AND you also
speak fluent Russian. You have the ability to have conversations in either language. But you
cannot use both at the same time and make proper sense to anyone! You cannot decide to put a
descriptive English verb in a Russian sentence, or apply Russian syntax in an English sentence.
You cannot randomly mix together words, phrases or paragraphs from the two languages. Your
expertise in English and Russian represents two independent "parallel" skills that are actually
incompatible with each other. You can work at building your language skills in either language
without being affected or concerned about the syntax and words of the other. THIS is how we
should look at Christianity and science! The two are parallel and totally independent
perspectives. Each is separately absolutely true and complete without any necessity for the other
(just like with the languages). Each can be studied and expertise developed, (nearly) absolutely
independently of the accomplishments or facts of the other perspective (again, just like with the
languages). Very importantly, a person could be extremely fluent in English and barely
understandable in Russian, or the other way around. A Venezuelan person may not know either.
Some people might be perfectly fluent in both. Two independent spectrums of expertise exist,
that have absolutely no relationship or dependence on each other. Similarly, a devout Christian
could have excellent scientific skills or he/she could have none. An extremely analytical scientist
could earnestly believe in Jesus or he/she could disbelieve. The two perspectives are totally
independent of each other and can and should be developed AND CONSIDERED separately. In
our English/Russian scenario, think about a question like "Which language is the CORRECT
one?" The question is irrelevant. NEITHER language is inferior to or more incomplete than the
other. Similarly, Christianity and science are each totally and equally valid and complete, and
absolutely independent.
Note that an English grammatician could look at the sentence structure of a Russian sentence and
think that he finds many errors. In his own realm of English, such a criticism might seem to
make sense, but a Russian grammatician could confirm the correctness of the actual Russian
sentence. Trying to apply rules and concepts of one, in analyzing sentences in the other, can be
meaningless and misleading.
Even though it might seem that this premise involves relativism or subjectivism, those concerns
are not present. In the same way that neither language is "relatively" better than the other, neither
science or Christianity is better in any relative sense. There is no subjective aspects involved
because they are (nearly) absolutely independent perceptions of the world.
It will be shown below that science does not need to "confirm" the existence of Noah's Ark, or
the Burial location of Jesus, or the existence of the Ark of the Covenant. Whether or not it ever
does, Christianity should not be based on that anyway. It must remain, as it always has been, a
matter of personal Faith.
Now, this sounds hard! How should one overlook the impressive accomplishments of science
and trust exclusively in Scripture (the way most Christian Churches try to insist)? That's actually
the wrong attitude. A historical example involving Albert Einstein (described below) shows us
that two parallel, seemingly incompatible understandings, can EACH be separately absolutely
true. With other support, this essay will demonstrate how this applies to the long-standing debate
between Christianity and science. As an extreme example of what it enables, it will explain how
it is even possible to believe (in a strict Christian context) in a true Six Day Creation, while also
embracing scientific research on stars that are known (in a scientific context) to be billions of
years old! This, and the many other sticking points between Christianity and science, are NOT
the overwhelming logical inconsistencies they have long seemed.
It is hoped that this essay will help Christians to maintain absolute and true Faith in the Lord and
in every detail of Scripture, while also welcoming ALL accomplishments of science as being
worthwhile and not perceiving them as challenges to their Faith. It is also hoped that analytical
scientists will be able to maintain their rigid logic, while also opening their minds to the
wonderful potential personal value of Christian Salvation.

Actual Cause of the Conflict

Christianity and science. Now there's a conversation topic that seems to invariably end up in a
heated argument! Why is that? Well, proponents or each side are generally extremely
convinced in the validity of their OWN position. After all, they have probably been
encouraged and cultivated to feel absolutely convinced of that. Christian children are constantly
taught to center their lives and beliefs on the Bible as being absolutely infallible (a good thing!),
and that it was written under the guidance of the Hand of God as a sourcebook for all correct
human behavior. On the other side, scientists are consistently taught to be skeptical of
EVERYTHING, unless such things can be either strictly proven beyond a reasonable doubt or
that observable evidence can be repeated many times with consistent results.
With some differences among themselves, Christian Fundamentalists insist on belief in the
inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin Birth and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and
atoning character of His death, His bodily Resurrection, and His Second Coming as the
irreducible minimum of authentic Christianity (first listed this way in 1878 in the Creed of the
Niagara Bible Conference). Science generally doesn't DENY these matters, but seriously doubts
them because of a lack of documentation and physical proof.
There is ONE specific subject that invariably seems central to the conflict. Christians
believe that men have SOULS. (Science does not necessarily have an opinion on this matter!)
A variety of things are sometimes meant by having a Soul, but usually a definition includes:

 (1) having Spiritual morality; being able to know right from wrong,

 (2) having self-awareness (or ego),

 (3) having Spiritual existence that is separate from the physical body, which survives
after the body experiences physical death,

 (4) being capable of feeling emotions, and

 (5) being capable of being Saved by Faith in Jesus through the Grace of God.
Why is there a problem here?
Christianity has ALWAYS very adamantly insisted that man was created separately from
all other living things, and in that uniqueness, God invested man alone with a Soul and
other spiritual, ethical, moral and intellectual characteristics. A central belief of Christianity
has always been that no other of God's creatures has a Soul. That belief has mandated the need
for a separate and distinct origin of mankind, which enabled and caused the unique presence of a
Soul in man (which Christians can try to Save). Unfortunately, modern science is merrily roaring
along proving more and more similarities between man and animals. Forty years ago, it was
established that the blood of some primates is virtually interchangeable with ours. For a while,
there was actually serious discussion about using such primate blood for humans during medical
operations. Twenty years ago, evidence was found that the chromosomes of humans and some
primates are more than 99% identical. Looming in the near future are analyses of the results of
the Human Genome Project, which might find absolute proof. IF it WERE ever proven,
beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there ARE conclusive genetic links between mankind and
lower animals, it would be presently be disastrous for ALL Christian Churches! (The
premise of this essay becomes extremely important in this situation, where Christian Faith can
SEPARATELY be true, even if it [sometimes] seems to totally contradict scientific findings.)
Science has already very well established the fact that the chromosomes of men and the
chromosomes of certain chimpanzees are remarkably similar. In the past few years, technology
has advanced to the point that the 3,000,000,000 component nucleotides that make up human
DNA can be individually identified and sequences recorded. Researchers announced, early in the
year 2000, that they had completed mapping the entire Human Genome. Several years earlier, it
was discovered that the similarity between the DNA of mankind and of those chimpanzees is
greater than 99% identical! Wow! In February 2001, scientists announced a number of amazing
findings like that. For example, the X-chromosome of a housecat is apparently perfectly identical
to a human X-chromosome!
Christian Churches are getting "cornered". They feel they must either continue to deny the
validity of DNA and genetics and evolution (and all of their consequences) [a Christian
Fundamentalist attitude] or someday publicly acknowledge it. Most Churches had been earlier
forced to acknowledge that the Earth is not flat, that it seems to be older than 6,000 years and
that DNA exists, and a number of other things. Each of these confrontations with scientific
findings has represented serious problems for the Church, but it has always gotten through. This
upcoming situation may be more serious. The uniqueness of the human Soul, and therefore the
unique origin of man, is one of the most central concepts there is in Christianity, one that cannot
be abandoned or modified.
Some Christian Churches have tried to "harmonize" their beliefs with the findings of modern
science. Some have even acknowledged the likely validity of genetics FOR PLANTS AND
ANIMALS (but not humans). This was dangerous, but it has always been carefully phrased to
make absolutely clear that mankind is NOT involved in what is being recognized. They are now
getting close to being forced to acknowledge the astounding similarities between some primates
and humans, mostly because the ongoing DNA mapping evidence is becoming so compelling.
(Few Christians seem aware that during the 1970s, the United States had a blood shortage. They
started a project to grow thousands of apes (I think in Ohio) in order to create blood which would
then be used in human operations! This project was proceeding actively until someone learned
about it and there was a great uproar over whether patients would tolerate having ape blood used
in them! As far as is known, the project was then rapidly ended! The point here is that the blood
of several types of apes are so identical to ours that such a project was even planned and started!
It is harder to argue how tremendously different we are biologically with such incidents
occurring!
Those similarities logically imply more than a remarkable coincidence. Statistically, those
similarities are far too great to just be accidental. They imply that the two different types of
beings, humans and primates, must have originated from an ancient common (biological) origin.
This would then lead to the conclusion that mankind and chimpanzees evolved from some now-
extinct common ancestor (the popular "missing link"), because, essentially, that is a definition of
evolution.
Christian Churches might be able to tolerate evolution, as long as it did not involve humans.
However, the Church has effectively dug itself a really deep hole. The teachings of two thousand
years of Christianity cannot tolerate evolution that involves humans. If humans evolved from
some ancient, primitive life form, and are actually very distantly related to lower animals, this
necessarily brings into question a number of the uniquenesses of mankind. Specifically, if
Christian Churches ever acknowledged that, would that imply that chimpanzees also have Souls?
Could chimpanzees be Saved if they could be brought to comprehend Jesus somehow? These are
incredible questions! Whether they are meaningful questions or not, media reporters would ask
these things of Church leaders. NO Church is prepared to respond to such questions, because
they cannot! ALL Christian Churches have ALWAYS had to insist on the separate (biological)
Creation of mankind, with the critically important consequences of these matters like the
existence of the Soul in mankind alone.
Christian scholars call this a "slippery slope" situation. If a Church took even a single step in that
direction, it would be almost certain that huge difficulties would follow. OK. So maybe you'd
tolerate the possibility of chimpanzees having Souls, whatever THAT might mean! Then, what
about gorillas? Since even dogs have DNA that is moderately similar to our own, what about
them? (Many pet owners have long thought that their dogs and cats have intellect and logic and
even Souls). And then, what about cows, pigs, horses? And rabbits, rats and mice? And birds,
alligators and snakes? And spiders, flies, and mosquitoes? And amoebae and paramecia? Even
trees, grasses, and seaweed have DNA that is moderately similar to our own. Would this mean
that even THEY had Souls and emotions and knowledge of right and wrong? After all, these
recent announcements regarding the analysis of human DNA are showing amazing similarities
even between trees and people!
This reasoning is obviously ridiculous, but who could define just WHERE the cut-off point
would be? Which types of creatures would have a Soul, like us, and which would not? A little
thinking about this quickly establishes that NO sharp cut-off point could possibly be identified. If
a Church acknowledged even a slight concession to science on this point of Soul, there would be
no end to the "slippery slope".
It gets worse! If a Christian Church were ever forced to the point of having to admit such a
possibility, that would be clear acknowledgement that two thousand years of Christian teaching
has been wrong on a VERY central issue (uniqueness of the human Soul). Almost immediately,
individuals and groups would attack the credibility of ALL the teachings of the Christian
Church, including the accuracy and authority of the Bible!
Obviously, NO Church could participate in having this happen, or even ALLOW it to happen.
Therefore, ALL Christian Churches have felt that they MUST continue to hold to that core
belief that mankind HAD TO HAVE BEEN CREATED SEPARATELY FROM ALL
OTHER CREATURES. They can have NO flexibility on this point! If they ever give an inch, a
mile of established Christian belief suddenly will unravel.
(By the way, many modern Christian Churches DO acknowledge a number of findings of
modern science: the billions of years of scientifically established history, the probable method in
which the Earth and Sun were formed, ocean formation, etc. In a variety of areas, Churches are
able to accept the findings of science, EVEN when they involve many aspects of the Genesis
story. There seems to even be some implicit tolerance of the concept of evolution in lower
animals and plants. Just NOT the one point involving mankind evolving from and being
related to other life forms!)
Most individual Christians would LOVE to whole-heartedly support the Bible's Creation story.
They are somewhat discouraged from doing so because of the impressive findings of modern
scientific progress that seem to contradict it. Sadly, many Christians have become SO
overwhelmed by science that they look to base their Faith on actual archaeological findings of
Noah's Ark or on scientific proof that Jesus actually did Miracles or on other historical or
scientific confirmations of Christian statements in the Bible. That actually defeats the whole
concept of Faith! In Faith, it is centrally important to BELIEVE some things where absolutely no
evidence or proof does or can exist. (This 'Parallelism' premise makes such external
documentation unnecessary and essentially irrelevant within the religious context.)
Scientists, on the other hand, generally don't hold Christian beliefs in high esteem. They tend to
just ignore the concept of religion and Creation as irrelevant. They tend to feel that Christianity
(or any other religion) is just a collection of unsupportable and undocumentable claims of people
who do not understand rigid logic. Instead, they rely on the long-proven methods of scientific
investigation and they arrive at solid results that they absolutely believe in. (Have faith in, as it
were!) They are generally willing to stake their professional reputations on those findings. Most
scientists don't intentionally have animosity for Christian beliefs. (Such a statement probably
surprises a lot of Christians). They often just consider the Christian community as following
teachings that cannot match the brutal logic of their investigations, so they often may not have
much respect for Christians. Some consider all of Christianity to be irrelevant! Not as an
opponent, as a lot of Christians believe, but as a non-entity! Whatever findings they arrive at,
they are proud of them, and they will defend those findings against any attackers. Such attackers
often include Christian scholars, for the defensive reasons mentioned above.

Private and public debates invariably occur. How much knowledge do debate proponents of each
side usually have about the thoughts and beliefs and methodologies of their opponents? Often,
very little. And, often, the weapons on both sides are only dogmatic allegations of apparent
weaknesses in the other's arguments, and VERY little in the way of anything positive. The whole
concept of 'debate' centers on finding and exploiting weaknesses in the position of the adversary.
"Prove them wrong! Rah! Rah! Rah!"
Individuals on each side of the issue have often been cultivated into disrespecting their
opponents. As a part of this, there is an implication that it would be pointless to even TRY to
understand what the opponents believe, because it is so foolish!
The Assertion and the Flaw

"We are right! They don't agree with us! Therefore, they are wrong! Period!" It all seems
pretty simple and obvious, to EACH side!
There is an incorrect assumption embedded in this viewpoint. THIS is where the flaw is in
the logic. The assumption is that a person MUST be wrong if they disagree with your view,
which you KNOW to be correct.
This does not seem like much of an assumption. Our daily experience consistently confirms
the validity of such an apparently obvious statement.
For example, a coin is lying with a President's picture visible. I call it heads. You say it is tails. I
am obviously right. You disagree with me. You are clearly wrong. And, importantly, We cannot
possibly both be right. A coin cannot be both heads and tails at the same time.
Philosophers even have a name for this concept. They call it "the Principle of Non-
Contradiction". As far back as Aristotle, this principle of logic has confidently been applied to
philosophy.
Any subject that involves absolute answers is effectively the same as this. We often refer to such
things as "black and white" choices; shades of gray are not an option. ALL of our experience
has always seemed to confirm that two mutually contradictory conclusions cannot both be
true at the same time. This has always seemed to confirm the assumption that is implicit in the
statement above. So, we have naturally come to automatically ACCEPT the assumption as true.
Later, we will make the case that this is NOT always necessarily true, and that there has already
been a prominent example of such a situation (involving Einstein) a century ago.

Exploring a Middle Ground

What if a "shade of gray" IS an option?
It could be VERY productive if each side would attempt to consider just WHY their
opponents believe what they do. It usually comes down to whether it is possible to believe that
the other guys feel they have good cause for believing what they do or believing that they are
complete idiots! Often, it is more convenient to just assume that they are idiots, being misled by:
the devil (science) or their leaders (Christians).
In many "olive branches" that are offered as potential "middle grounds", some substantial
concessions are expected on one or both sides in order to "harmonize" the two approaches. Either
science is expected to ease its strict adherence to fact and logic, or Christianity is expected to
concede the reality of some important belief. This situation has always doomed all "middle
ground" approaches to failure. And that seems certain to forever be the case.

If neither side of a discussion has any respect for the intellect of the other, productive
conversation is very unlikely. Each side winds up digging in and aggressively spouting dogma,
defending their side's point-of-view. No one is persuaded of anything and emotions start to build,
and most such discussions rapidly degrade into arguments.
Considering the Christianity versus science debate, be practical for a moment:

 There are well over one billion people on Earth who believe in Christ and God (Catholic,
 Protestant, and Orthodox). If your perspective is from a scientific point-of-view, are you
prepared to think that they ALL are too stupid to understand basic things? Even if they
don't understand or accept science and genetics and paleontology and evolution, could
that many people be so totally wrong? And they have been absolutely wrong for nearly
two thousand years!? A billion people are wrong, and YOU are right!? Hmmmmm!

 If your perspective is from a Christian point-of-view, are you willing to believe that ALL
of the several million highly educated scientists on our planet are blind to all Truth, and
therefore misled into believing totally wrong ideas? No matter HOW efficient Satan
might be, that many intelligent, conscientious scientists must at least OCCASIONALLY
locate some true facts!
Either of these approaches seems very arrogant and wrong. They are each based on that
assumption that seems so eminently obvious. We don't agree. We have contradictory
positions. Only one of us can be right. I am totally confident that I am right. Therefore, you
ARE wrong.
If this is actually correct, (and it has been assumed to be so for the entire period of analytical
science), then it is destined that NO resolution will ever be possible. An example is whether
evolution and genetic adaptation has occurred, and more specifically, whether mankind
descended from lower animals or whether he was created separately and independently by God,
as per the Creation story of Genesis 1. There IS no middle ground here. The two explanations are
mutually exclusive. It's true or it is not.
This sort of situation has always been central to the conflict between Christianity and
science. Clearly, no resolution seems possible!

Frustration, at an Intractable Problem

Open-minded people on both sides of the debate often look to form bridges, and on some points,
concessions have been offered and tolerance accomplished. But on core beliefs, no bridge is or
can ever be possible, because of those central issues that are clearly diametrically opposite each
other (especially the one just mentioned). Hopeless!
This popular trend toward attempting to resolve the conflict involves quite a few (promising?)
loose ends, however. There are definitely things that the "other side" believes that can not
obviously be dismissed inside of "our" beliefs. The temptation (and popular tendency) has been
to just ignore such things, and to retreat back to areas of "our" strength.
A brief example of such loose ends on each side:

 A problem for the Christian side is trying to explain the amazing similarity between
human DNA and that of all of the other of God's creatures, especially certain apes and
chimpanzees.

 A problem for the scientific side is explaining the remarkably accurate SEQUENCE of
pre-historic events presented in Genesis 1 (discussed below).
  We'll get back to new perspectives on each of these later.
It can be VERY beneficial to explore such things with an open mind. If such exploration can
inspire some respect for the intellect of the opponents, some LARGER perspective might be
possible, that might be able to include the two disparate viewpoints as subsets of a bigger picture.
How could it ever be possible to find a resolution for such intractable subjects?
Hope!

It turns out that there MAY be a way! It turns out that a vaguely similar situation had existed
inside the field of Physics for hundreds of years. And then, along came a guy named Einstein,
who recognized a larger perspective on the matter. He saw that BOTH of the arguing sides had
been absolutely and totally right all along! The author believes that God planned all that
conflict and resolution to play out in the field of Physics, and to be eloquently resolved a
hundred years ago, as a learning example for us today. In our struggles with finding any
possible compatibility between Christianity and science, we might benefit from that
history.

God's Learning Example for Us

(Author's note: Sorry, but it is necessary to get into some technical stuff now. An effort will be
made to try to keep it as painless as possible!)

Wave Versus Particle

At the start of the 17th century, Galileo first used the telescope to explore the heavens. Shortly
thereafter, scientists came to disagree about the true nature of light. Two major approaches were
dominant in the controversy. Some believed a "corpuscular" theory which involved light being
tiny particles, which were transferred from a source (like the Sun), to a destination (like our
Earth) and these particles carried the heat and life-giving energy to us. Others believed that light
was a wave-phenomenon where the energy was carried by a wave motion and not by actual
movement of actual of particles from the source to the destination.
Many of the world's best thinkers got involved in this debate. Pierre de Fermat, one of the
world's foremost thinkers, believed and aggressively supported a version of the corpuscular
theory. Rene Descartes, another of world renown, believed and supported a slightly different
corpuscular theory. Christian Huygens, who was equally respected and known, believed and
supported a wave-based explanation. These men were the intellectual heavy hitters of the day.

Hostility, Animosity
The initially peaceful, constructive debate on the true nature of light gradually degraded into a
situation where animosity ruled. Those who believed in the corpuscular theory occasionally
thought up experiments or evidence to support their position, but more generally spent their
efforts attacking the wave theory proponents. These attacks ranged from personal attacks on the
intelligence and ability of the individuals, to specific attacks on specific experiments or results,
to generalized attacks on the concept. The wave theory proponents acted in kind. It must have
been hard for any scientist of the day to hold his head high. The mud slinging resembled that
done in some of the uglier modern American political contests.

No Answers!
Resolution did NOT occur! For nearly three hundred years, scientists were forced to choose
one belief or the other, because they were clearly absolutely mutually contradictory. Then,
after having chosen one or the other, these new scientists added their voices to those who came
before them, and sometimes even intensified the rhetoric. The schism among scientists regarding
the true nature of light had gotten to be pure dogma. Very little new thought was being
developed in the area. Most effort gradually came to be in the attacks on the opposing side, and
in experimentally proving the validity of their own side.

We MUST Find the Errors in the Other Side!

The situation was clearly not soluble, unless one side might happen on some possible way to
utterly destroy the opposition, which didn't seem to be in the wings. No middle ground was
possible, either. Light was EITHER a non-solid wave phenomenon OR a solid particle
(corpuscular) phenomenon. It's either solid or it isn't. Even if it could somehow be found to be
"semi-solid", it would still be "solid." The same is true of wave phenomena. Tiny waves are still
waves. There was no such meaningful concept as a wave-particle, and all those scientists
knew that, so no "shade of gray" solution was possible.
To clarify the scale of the problem, consider the following. If the correct nature of light is as a
particle, this implies a certain "graininess" where you couldn't forever keep dividing an amount
of light in half (dimming it down, as it were). At some point, you would get down to one particle
of light, and it couldn't be divided further. (If you could, the pieces would no longer be light, but
something else.) In contrast, a wave nature implies ALWAYS being able to divide it in half,
forever. No matter how small a wave is, you can ALWAYS make it smaller. You either can or
you cannot keep dividing it forever.

But We KNOW We Are Right!

Yet, absolutely compelling evidence existed to support each point of view. Numerous
experiments supported the wave nature of light. When two beams of light are aimed at each
other, they pass through each other without hitting and bouncing off, just like waves would.
When light passes through a narrow slit, some of it is diffracted, and interference patterns are
easily seen. This is also clearly a distinctive wave phenomenon. But there were some long-
standing scientific findings, such as stellar aberration and the Photoelectric Effect, which gave
equally compelling evidence for a particle (or quantum) nature for light. Each side could find
repeatable scientific evidence to support (and PROVE) its own position, but couldn't
resoundingly demonstrate the errors in the opposing viewpoint.
And EVERYONE involved knew that both sides could NOT be correct! The two
descriptions were irreconcilably incompatible with each other!
Hmmmmm!
Does this sound familiar?
Christians and scientists each find extensive basis for their OWN beliefs, and each KNOW
that they are right, but are frustrated at not being able to conclusively disprove the
opposition's view.

The Nature of Light Dilemma Resolved

Finally, a man came along who looked at all the evidence and saw a bigger picture and realized
that both sides had been entirely right all along. This man, Albert Einstein, didn't get his Nobel
Prize (in 1921) for his work in relativity. He actually received it for his explanation of the
Photoelectric Effect. His insight in this subject was significant because it resolved the
controversy over the nature of light. The actual mathematics of the explanation of the
Photoelectric Effect is somewhat trivial, but the conceptualization was exquisite. He had found a
resolution, where all of the hundreds of the world's best minds hadn't, over the previous
centuries!

A Broader Perspective
All the previous efforts had been in trying to find a major flaw in the opposing approach,
to claim victory by default. Einstein realized that that approach was forever doomed to failure,
since BOTH sides had been entirely right all along! Einstein was the first to recognize that the
two camps had merely been perceiving different aspects of a more complicated
phenomenon. Under certain circumstances, light appears to behave EXACTLY as if it was a
wave. But under other circumstances, it appears to behave EXACTLY as if it was a particle. It
CANNOT show evidence of both at once! (That's VERY important!) It is not appropriate to get
into the Physics of this here, because it gets real deep, real fast! If you're curious, any college
Physics textbook includes a discussion of the subject.
Light did NOT have a simple, single, fixed nature, as had been previously thought. Its
complex TRUE nature just APPEARED to us to exhibit characteristics of being a wave OR of
being a particle, depending on what experiment we did. It is now generally accepted that any
experiment you could ever do will only show light to seem to be a particle OR a wave, and
NEVER both at the same time.
A VERY important point here is that NEITHER side had to concede the slightest detail to
the other. No "accommodating" was necessary and both sides could confidently know that
they could fully believe EVERYTHING that they had ever earlier believed.

Immediate Consequences of the Concept of the Dual Nature of Light

Once Einstein broached this level of understanding about the nature of light, the floodgates of
new knowledge opened. Recognition that solid objects were also subject to this dual nature soon
led to E=mc2 and the universal equivalence of energy and matter (another now-obvious example
of this Duality within Physics). In addition, the entire fields of Quantum Mechanics and General
Relativity suddenly sprouted. Suddenly, the growth of knowledge in physics was so fast that
scientists found it hard to keep up with the mass of current discoveries. This situation still
persists today in nuclear physics and astrophysics. Quarks, gluons, black holes, cosmic strings,
and literally hundreds of other new areas of research are currently being explored. All because
Albert realized that neither side had to be wrong.

Is the point obvious?

God appears to have given us this historic example of a long-term, absolutely intractable
problem. There was clearly no solution possible. Then He helped Einstein recognize a larger
truth in it.
Christians and scientists today, (and, in a similar situation, even Young earth and Old earth
Creationists) face a similar situation. Some just find it easiest to try to ignore the other side. But
many thousands of the world's best minds have looked for major flaws in the position of
the other side, in order to be able to claim victory by default, and all have been memorably
ineffective in showing errors significant enough to displace arguments of the other side.
Yes!!!

The premise here is that a larger truth exists, as in the recognition of the dual nature of light.
Both the Christians AND the scientists are totally and absolutely correct! This is true, even
though there would appear to be elements that are incompatible and irresolvable. As with the
case of light, it is impossible to find the fatal flaw in either argument, because there is none!
The two perspectives, which often seem so diametrically opposed, are actually each internally
perfectly consistent explanations of our history and heritage and environment. The two
represent "parallel" perspectives of the Universe, each absolutely and completely valid.
Before Einstein, an individual scientist could find comfort in his belief that light was a particle
OR in that it was a wave. Each felt that his choice gave an appropriate explanation to fill in a gap
in human knowledge. As it turns out, they were all right! Since Einstein, we find comfort in a
more comprehensive explanation that clearly explains all of the confusing discrepancies that had
befuddled scientists for centuries.
A similar situation exists in the Christianity / science debate (the main part of which is known as
the Creationism / evolutionism debate.) Christians have always found comfort in the conviction
of their beliefs. Scientists have long found comfort in relying on extremely rigid logic and
indisputable facts. This partially explains why each group defends its ground so adamantly. Each
side has total confidence in its established positions, which are all based on compelling evidence,
arguments, and beliefs. There is no doubt whatever that what they believe is completely true!

This Time, the Subject is More Difficult

The debate on the nature of light had the advantage of being something where repeatable
experiments could be performed to confirm aspects of the phenomenon involved. This
established firm foundations for the arguments of both sides. It also allowed Einstein to
recognize that he could absolutely not disprove either side's arguments, and therefore to
figure out that there had to be a larger truth regarding the matter.
The science/religion debate involves events of a very distant past history, and often of a
subjective nature, which means that scientists have incomplete information with which to work.
This same limitation also affects the Christian argument, both from the antiquity of the
information and from the fact that the Bible wasn't really intended as a precisely historical
document. Both sides therefore have huge gaps in their information base, which complicates the
debate even more than the nature-of-light debate had been.

A Resolution
In order for someone to reasonably accept such a different (and difficult) perspective as this
Duality explanation, it helps that there was the similar Einstein precedent for us to learn from.
Not just for the Physics that was learned, but for the idea that we might be able to take a step
back, to be able to see a larger, more comprehensive understanding of things.
From the Science Side

For scientists, the subject described above regarding the true nature of light, is an excellent
example which is absolutely accepted by all scientists today. Still, the necessary consequence of
the fact that all matter and energy can (and does!) switch from one to the other (under rather
specific circumstances) can still be a little unsettling. In the past century, science learned that
solid objects are mostly empty space with occasional atoms, which seem to act like solid little
balls, right? Well, no. Those atoms are actually also mostly empty space with a nucleus in the
middle and electrons flying all around it, which FINALLY are solid little balls, right? Well, no!
A consequence of this new understanding of the nature of light and matter is that all of these
protons, neutrons, and electrons can sometimes seem to act as waves and therefore pass directly
through each other! Every college Physics major remembers even calculating just how often the
orbiting electrons actually pass directly through the (solid!??) nucleus of an atom. A huge
number of other equally counter-intuitive consequences have resulted from the recognition of the
dual nature of energy and matter.
Therefore, it seems reasonable that a scientist, who understands and accepts the
sophisticated duality of light and matter/energy, should be willing to consider a Duality
understanding of Creation / Evolution.
From the Christianity Side

Christians, from early on, have had an equally difficult concept to deal with. God is at once, One
and Three. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are usually conceptualized as individual "Persons",
but they're actually One and the Same "Substance". Truly understanding how He can be One and
Three at the same time is somewhat difficult. Discussions and explanations of the Trinity often
revert to expressions of personal opinions, or semantic gyrations (such as one substance, three
persons, with rather little truly supportive evidence for any specific point-of-view. The point
being made here is that the Trinity situation is moderately similar to recognizing how Biblical
Creation and Scientific History can be perceived as very different while they actually are one and
the same!
Therefore, it seems reasonable that a Christian, who understands and accepts the
sophistication of the Trinity, should be willing to consider the possibility of a Duality
understanding of Creation / Evolution.
(By the way, the Duality referred to here is NOT related in any way to the religious concept of
Dualism! Actually, they are almost diametrically opposite. Where dualism requires an exclusive
CHOICE of one OR the other of two opposing choices, Duality's premise is that BOTH of the
two choices are equally and continuously and completely and permanently true!) Because of this
area of confusion, this premise is also being referred to as Parallelism.

Many modern Christians must not have much belief in the astounding and limitless capabilities
and foresight of the Lord. Otherwise, they would see that there is actually no reason to
emphasize contradiction between Biblical Creationism and scientific theories and conclusions.
As a matter of fact, God gave us the story of Genesis, which effectively strongly supports (and
even statistically proves!) the compatibility between Christianity and science (see below). God is
SUCH a Wonderful and Compassionate God, that He provided an absolute logic in His Universe
that allows inquisitive people to successfully pursue scientific investigations.

The View through the Christian Perspective

The Lord clearly DID create the world and the universe. From the strict Christian
Fundamentalist point-of-view, He actually did all this in six days! He began by
creating LIGHT (which took an entire Day!) In the process of Creation, He invested
man alone with a Soul, and therefore created him totally separately from all of His
creatures! And He caused descriptions of all the events to get to Moses and thence into
the Bible, several thousand years ago. And He realized even then that He needed to
provide for the future natural curiosity of His humankind.
During that six days of Work, with incredible foresight, He arranged for fossils to be
available to be found in many rocks throughout the world, even though no one would
even know what a fossil even WAS for thousands of years! He arranged sedimentary
rock layers and magnetic "striping" and radioactive dating information that would later
suggest enormous time intervals. He arranged the planets and stars and galaxies to
appear basically as they do to us now. He arranged for the DNA double helix and
evidence of similarities between the DNA of His humans and the DNA He put in other
living things, even though there was NO actual relationship between them!
He also left innumerable intriguing clues (and some red herrings) for the edification of
the curious scientific humans that would come many centuries later, that could support
a scientifically self-consistent evolutionary explanation for all of our questions about
the past and the Universe and ourselves.
Christians generally accept the Genesis story of Creation as absolute fact, and therefore
irrefutable, because it is the written record that God had Moses write down in the
Bible, which cannot have any errors.
The View through the Scientific Perspective
It clearly took around 13.2 billion years for all of the natural processes to occur that are
presented so briefly in Genesis. Science has also clearly established that LIGHT came
first! Incontrovertible evidence has been accumulated to prove that the stars and Sun
and planets and Earth and Moon took unimaginably long times to form. Oceans and the
atmosphere gradually developed on the Earth. Sedimentary deposition and rock
formation occurred over periods of millions of years, and when animals and plants
occasionally died under very specific circumstances, a fossil was eventually formed
from minerals from water that got deposited in the hollow mold.
Radioactive decay of certain elements is a natural and predictable phenomenon, which
can be used to reasonably accurately find the age of some of such very old objects. All
of the creatures that now live and have ever lived came about by a rather slow,
completely natural process of individual variation, naturally selective survival,
mutation and evolution, with mankind coming about by this same process. DNA
similarities between man and animals and even plants are therefore totally natural and
logical. The entire Universe, including the Earth and mankind, evolved in a natural
progression of events.
The Universe and all of its contents are therefore absolutely logical, and a (scientific)
history of the past could be assembled without even having to rely on the Genesis
story.
Science knows that it is forever a "work in progress" so most ideas about the
explanations and inter-relationships about all of these matters are subject to future
revision and improvement. Therefore, science generally describes much of their effort
as being "theories". It might seem surprising, but strict science still considers gravity
as a "Theory of gravitation" rather than the "Law of gravity" that is popularly
referred to. And where religion always INSISTS on claiming ABSOLUTE statements,
science thrives on the opposite! If someone should some day do an experiment which
proves the Theory of Gravitation to be wrong, scientists would LOVE that! It would be
an OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN SOMETHING NEW!
True science is INCREDIBLY cautious before claiming anything as absolute fact! But
many of their "theories" are virtually certain to be true (like gravity!).

Why would He go to the trouble to do all this?

With His infinite foresight, He knew that thousands (or billions) of years later, His humans
would develop the capabilities of organized learning and researching into every facet of their
environment, and would amass information at an impressive rate in all fields of investigation. He
knew that their curiosity would eventually extend to exploring their own past and their
environment's past. If He did not provide for that, their curiosity would be frustrated by coming
upon logically incompatible information. Our Loving God would never do that to us!
By impressively and lovingly planning ahead, He Created a Universe that could be perceived in
either of two very different ways, and He made sure that each of the two ways was absolutely
internally self-consistent! He effectively allowed future men to believe EITHER a story that
involved one really impressive week OR a story that apparently required phenomenally
long periods of time, whichever gave each of them the most comfort! But not both stories at
the same time!
Down below, we present BOTH versions of the stories involved in Genesis 1. I ask that you
consider the following thought. YOU are God (for a moment!) You go to a lot of effort which
might be described by:
Early on, ONLY the element Hydrogen existed, the very simplest of all atoms. YOU caused
Gravitation to cause clouds of this Hydrogen gas to collect in large balls. When a ball got
extremely large, YOU caused the weight of all the overlying Hydrogen to squeeze and heat up
the Hydrogen at the very center. Once you got that Hydrogen got up above 100 million degrees
or so, the Hydrogen atoms were moving so fast (that's what heat actually is, the speed of atoms
moving around) that when they crashed together, they didn't always bounce off but sometimes
fused together, a process we now call nuclear fusion. As a result, atoms of Helium were formed,
the next simplest atom.

Eventually, you used up all the Hydrogen fuel, and the outward going radiation that was
partially supporting the weight of outer layers would essentially stop. This would allow a further
collapse of the size of the star, causing even greater temperatures in its center. Eventually, with
massive stars, the temperatures could get high enough that the new Helium atoms started fusing
together, creating more energy and even heavier atoms in the process, such as Carbon.

You could continue with this sort of thing (for the very most massive stars) with ever heavier
atoms as fuel and even heavier atoms as results. At some point, after having therefore created
nearly all the types of atoms from the initial Hydrogen, you made the star become unstable and
blow itself apart, in something called a nova or supernova. This resulted in all those varieties of
atoms being sprayed out across the Universe. With enough time, the Universe would get
cluttered with such an assortment of elements and chemicals.

At a later time, you worked with a DIFFERENT cloud of Hydrogen, which included a mixed
assortment of these other elements, gravitationally collected to form our Sun, and also our
various planets, including Earth. There is reasonable scientific documentation for these various
ideas, and collectively they are seen as being an explanation of how our incredibly complex
Universe, with all its 92 elements and countless chemical compounds, could have arisen from
just simple Hydrogen, given enough time.

The paragraphs above were an extremely brief presentation of the field of Cosmology, a
reasonably well-founded subject in science. Note that there are some amazing consequences.
Look at your little finger. It is primarily composed of Carbon and Oxygen with many other
elements in small amounts. If Cosmology is correct in the above, then every single one of those
countless billions of atoms of Carbon and Oxygen in your finger were originally fused together
in some extremely remote stars which later supernovaed! The concepts are nearly as mind-
boggling as the Bible's Genesis 1!
OK, God, are you going to provide all this detail for a scribe to write down as description of
what you had done? Keep in mind that virtually everyone was uneducated and illiterate.
As a smart God, I am tempted to think that instead, you would feel it far better to be brief, And
God said, Let there be Light.
Which would YOU want to find in Genesis 1:3?
Do you see WHY God saw value in being very brief in his descriptions of the events of Genesis
1? Anything more, and no one would believe it (or understand it).
Clearly, there are clues in even more inaccessible spots on and in the Earth and elsewhere in the
Universe, that we may not find for thousands of years yet. We current mortals are not necessarily
the final generations. With His unlimited knowledge of our curiosity and inventiveness, it seems
obvious that many future discoveries await us that even Sherlock Holmes would have difficulty
deducing. How wonderful that He has provided for our entertainment and edification. He
thoughtfully arranged for us to keep from getting bored. At the same time, He provided a
consistency of logic in His Universe, such that we could achieve a level of understanding of the
Universe. Every future discovery will certainly be compatible with both His Book and scientific
investigation! That is pretty impressive just in itself!
EITHER Creation OR Evolution Is Absolutely Correct!

Wonderfully, each of us can therefore choose to believe EITHER Creation OR evolution, and we
will each be able to forever believe in and support that perspective. In either case, we can be
absolutely confident that our understanding is absolutely true and totally correct in every detail.
God has very carefully arranged His Book and His Universe to be compatible with
EITHER approach to understanding. There are actually NO direct contradictions between the
two stories, no matter what advocates of either side tell you. NEITHER story can EVER be
disproven!
The vicious attacks between Christian leaders and scientific spokespeople have become so
common and expectable, that many people on both sides have closed their minds to the ideas of
ever finding compatibility with people of the other side. If they each would just be open-minded
enough to accept (tolerate?) and digest the knowledge of BOTH sides, they would all have
TWICE as much background information to work with and should be able then to achieve even
better understandings of the complexities of this life the Lord has given us.
An Analogy

It is a difficult concept to deal with, that two apparently incompatible views might
simultaneously be true. The author has tried to suggest that such a compatibility is valid by the
Einstein resolution of the nature of light debate, but it is suspected that was only persuasive to
scientists who are familiar with that history. Also considered was referring to any of a number of
"optical illusions" such as a popular drawing that can look like an old woman or a young girl (but
never both simultaneously) or another drawing that looks like a vase or like two people facing
each other (but never both simultaneously), but the word "illusions" might imply some sort of
artificial trickery. Instead, the author has come up with the following description, which it is
hoped will assist in conceptualizing how two very different, apparently incompatible,
appearances might exist, where there is actually only a single reality.

Think of being in some desolate mountain locale. With great difficulty, you climb up to discover
a lone building on the very top of a hill. The path you happened to climb up only enables you to
approach a single wall of the building, (the corners of the building
overhang the cliffs) and therefore you are only able to look into the single,
small, dirty window centered on that wall. There are no doors. As you look
in, you see a large, basically empty room with a single round, brown,
apparently old, wooden object in the center of the room.
While you are pondering what you see, wishing you could get a better view
of the antiquish round object in the building, you hear the voice of another
person who has apparently climbed up a different path, and who came up to
have access only to a single small window on a different side of the
building. That person is apparently now also looking into the room, through his single small
window that is present on THAT wall.

That voice begins commenting on the object in the center of

the room. Comments about the beauty and reflectivity of the
shiny new metal surface really confuse you. The rectangular
shape is so wonderful! The greenish color of the reflection
of light off the object is beautiful!
What is going on here? Is the person speaking a raving
lunatic? Is he really looking into the building? Is he blind?
Or stupid? Don't you wish that you could get around the
corner to maybe knock some sense into his head? You can
see with your own eyes, and he is clearly wrong, wrong,
wrong! Fortunately for him, there is no easy path around the
corner, and it would require you to climb all the way down and then back up on the other path to
get there. What is the result of this? You are almost certain to disbelieve and disrespect the other
person, and therefore you are certain to ignore any evidence he claims to be offering you.
It also turns out that if you express what you see to the unseen companion, an equally
disrespectful attitude is likely to develop in him about you. Each of you is absolutely confident
of what you are seeing, so you consider that to be the absolute and total truth. The unseen
companion makes statements that are not compatible with what you know to be the truth. Such
statements are obviously to be ignored!
Add to this situation, that a reference Book, the Bible, happened to be available just outside
the Christian window, which does not actually offer explanations for the differences you
are arguing about, but merely absolutely assures Christians that there is really only ONE
OBJECT in the room and that THEIR VIEW of it is CORRECT and ACCURATE.
What neither of you know is that the object that you both are looking at in the room (and which
neither of you has actual access to) is actually an object shaped like most of a 55-gallon oil drum,
lying on its side, with the top (round) surface facing you. The other person is looking at the side,
which appears to be rectangular. The materials and textures and colors of the drum's side and top
are different, which explains the other disparate findings of the two of you.

If the two of you choose to be so narrow-minded as to

only believe what your own eyes see, neither of you
will LISTEN much or learn much and neither of you
will ever understand the true nature of the object
much better. Each of you sees something that seems
to make sense to you, and seems to give a complete
and self-consistent and comforting concept to you.
Why look farther? Why even consider some
stranger's comments that seem clearly
incompatible with what you can see with your own
eyes?
However, if the two of you would somehow be willing to give some credibility to each other,
intellectual growth could occur. Each of you could have nearly twice as much information to
build from. Eventually one or the other of you (maybe named Einstein??) might eventually
realize that a more complete explanation exists of what you both saw. A moment of inspiration
might be that it was a cylinder, lying on its side, with the end facing you.
It might even then happen that the companion notices that very thin line that rises up from the
right edge of what he sees. He might then realize that that is probably the EDGE of the round
disk that YOU are looking at. Prior to the constructive conversation between the two of you, he
might not even have noticed that line, and certainly wouldn't have understood its significance.
Your collective knowledge of the object is now greater than the sum of your independent
knowledges! A whole new vista of understanding has been gained!
With just the information from the view through one window, neither of you could ever
figure out such things.
Once the basic concept (of front and side views) was presented and found acceptable to both of
you, the other details could quickly be analyzed to develop a decently complete idea of just what
the object actually seemed to be. You two would start to ask productive questions of each
other! Sharing your knowledge and insights would become exhilarating! Will the resultant
conclusions be absolutely correct? Probably not, particularly since neither of you would likely
figure out that much of the top part of the drum had been cut away, but they will certainly be a
LOT more correct and complete than would otherwise have been possible.
The point here is that, it is easy to be very narrow-minded as to only believe what your own
eyes see through YOUR window, without even considering that there might be different
views that exist of the object in the room. This attitude would cause you to ignore or dismiss
anything you might hear from those unseen strangers that you have no reason to respect. If such
a person happens to say ANYTHING that seems to contradict what you can personally see and
already personally know as the (complete) Truth, why would you even consider it? Actually,
from the Christian side, considering the emotional intensity often associated with devout
religious belief, your immediate response is likely to be violently defensive. Blasphemy! Heresy!
How DARE someone try to pollute the purity of what you KNOW to be the Truth with such
LIES!? From the scientific side, such emotional response is less likely, but often there is a
general dismissal of "illogical" statements by "unschooled Christians."
As a result, neither of you will probably learn much about the true nature of what's in that room.
Each group has a view that gives it certain information about the room's contents, some of which
is uniquely visible from that view. Since the Christian group has been Divinely given a Book that
insists and confirms that the view being seen is AN accurate and correct and true view, why even
pay attention to strangers who are trying to convince you of strange things that are clearly not
even compatible with the Book?
Each view makes sense in itself and does not appear to be incomplete in any way. With
nothing apparently missing, why look to untrusted, unknown strangers for their peculiar
(heretical??) opinions on it? An implicit assumption is made by viewers through each of the
windows. We just stated that the Christian window was even accompanied by a Book that
confirmed that the view being seen is AN accurate and correct and true view. The assumption is
in extrapolating that to meaning that the view is THE one and only accurate and correct and true
view. But, the reality is, that with just the information from the view through a single window,
whether you realize it or not, which DOES show you the Truth, there are additional Truths that
you have no possible way of ever comprehending.
This situation seems to be similar to the "Babel" situation. Without full and complete mutual
respect and open and honest communication, none of us have any hope of truly comprehending a
deeper level of God's Plan.
Once people would become willing to accept a more comprehensive communication between
Christianity and science, we could then probably learn much more by comparing notes with each
other. Unfortunately, because of the location and position of the building, it is fairly difficult for
an individual to ever get a good look in both of the windows himself. Advancement will
probably devolve to whether people can establish enough respect for those "other" viewers to
come to accept what they say without any way of personal verification. But, if this can be
achieved, each could start to ask productive questions of those other viewers to refine existing
understandings of the actual Truth.

Note: Some readers might think that this analogy is like various previous analogies, such as the
elephant and the several blind men. It is actually quite different. The blind men each only feel a
small portion of a larger whole, and make incorrect conclusions from that very limited
perception. Please note that each of the views being presented here is complete by itself. The
entire barrel is viewed, and not just a corner of it. Each view appears to be complete, with no
apparent missing information. Where each blind man, given enough time and curiosity, would
likely explore more of the elephant and eventually learn more about it, each view of the barrel
does not seem to be lacking any information, so there is no incentive for further (external)
exploration. This conclusion, of believing that one sees the WHOLE truth in the view, is central
to this premise.

Our Two Different Windows

The premise suggests that Christians are looking in one window on life and the Universe and
scientists are looking in a different one. They are actually looking at the precise same
Universe! Instead of just seeing different colors or textures on a simple object, they are actually
looking at an immensely complex environment with very complicated images with complex
differences. (The windows might even somehow act as time lenses, apparently compressing or
expanding the time intervals perceived through them. That's not actually important to this
concept, but it might seem useful later!) Think about the duality of light situation. Two
extremely different appearances, but actually only a single entity. Very similar.

The View Through EITHER Window is Comforting

For the author, personally, this premise enables being able to (separately) BOTH believe in
a true strictly Fundamentalist Biblical six day Creation with its uniquely human Soul AND
in a scientifically established sequence that includes evolutionary principles and billions of
years. Just not both at the same time! Because it is just not possible to look in through both
windows at the same time!
When the author explores scientific matters, such as astro-physics, great distances and apparently
unimaginably long time periods are perceived, and evolutionary associations are acknowledged
between all living things. When he studies his Bible, he sees and fully accept that Creation took
Six Days and that mankind was created absolutely independently and uniquely and separately
from all of God's other Creations. These two EXTREMELY different perspectives are not seen
as any logical impasse, because of this Duality/Parallelism approach. As long as one doesn't try
to "mix and match" between specifics that are seen in viewing through the two windows, there is
never any confrontation with any actual contradictions. Each perspective is (individually)
absolutely complete and self-consistent and obviously true.
It would only be if one tries to "harmonize" a Six-Day Creation in 4004 BC (seen through one
window) with the presence of dinosaurs that died off 65 million years ago (seen through the
other window), that one would be faced with apparent contradictions. But this example, and all
others, are NOT actually contradictions! They only seem so because of an error in trying to mix
things seen from the two windows. In reality, (through the Christian window), the dinosaurs
probably DID exist, but they both came into existence AND died out and their fossils were
created early in the Sixth Day of Creation. (This matter will be discussed below.)
Genesis as Proof of the Compatibility of Science and Christianity

Over 3,000 years ago, God presented men with the story of Genesis. He knew that man would
always have great curiosity about his environment and history. Since this story was presented
to very primitive humans, who were almost universally illiterate, He knew that the story
should be brief and clear and fairly simple. (Few modern Christians seem to realize that at the
time of Moses [around 1275 BC], there was not yet any written language invented [the first
written languages being developed around 1200 BC. Prior to that, only symbols in stone,
hieroglyphs and similar systems, but no language.]) He also clearly wanted to emphasize to those
early humans just how incredibly powerful He was, so He presented the entire Creation story as
having taken just Six Days. Even if He had WANTED to describe the steps as having taken
millions or billions of years (which might have made it seem like He was not so spectacularly
powerful), the peoples of the time would not have been able to comprehend such time intervals.
Even now, when we casually discuss thousands of years of history, or even greater intervals, it is
very difficult for us to actually comprehend any time period greater than our own human lifetime
of 70 years or so.
God also knew that the inquisitive and creative and persistent nature of man would some
day enable mankind to more carefully and thoroughly investigate human environments
and history. With remarkable thoughtfulness, He made sure that fossils would exist, He
provided DNA similarities of all living things, and many other intellectual artifacts. Scientists
who would come to exist thousands of years in the future would be able to find appropriate
evidence to be able to intellectually create logical sequences and patterns. Those scientists would
eventually conclude that the human environment would seem absolutely scientifically self-
consistent, and that a logical history of the past would also be (some day) absolutely logically
self-consistent.
Since He has provided us with a duality of understandings of our Universe, each of which is
absolutely internally self-consistent, we will NEVER have any way of proving one or the
other wrong. We WILL always find that EACH perspective is "right" and can be forever
confidently supported. He arranged for Creation believers to be able to conclude that He
"planted" fossil evidence and even "aged" those artifacts so that they would give reassurance to
the scientists who would some day find them, even though He actually whipped all of it up in
just Six Days. He arranged for those people whose logic made them resist believing such a rapid
Creation process, to eventually develop solid logic and science and to therefore be capable of
developing a compelling scientific explanation of everything. This just means that the "views"
through the two different windows of the analogy above, each show us the exact same Universe,
but just seem somehow to differently present the apparent rate of the passage of time.
There are very few instances where the Bible and science stand face-to-face regarding
established facts. The most prominent of these is the story of Creation in Genesis. The Book tells
us what happened. Modern science also tells us what apparently happened. The time scales
involved are extremely different, but we've already commented on that. The critical part would
be that the SEQUENCE of the events described has to be in the same order. Then, even if
the time scale appears very different, or even non-linear, the two perspectives could still be
compatible. If the sequence does NOT match up very well, no realistic compatibility could be
inferred.
This allowed God to give a brief, simple story of Creation to Moses for the primitive people of
ancient times, while also allowing future human curiosity to find consistency in logic in
everything, which would eventually include "fleshing out" the brief Genesis story with a more
complete, scientifically-supported story.
It seems certainly intentional that the time scale that actually occurred while the Universe was
created, was left vague. The premise of this Parallelism concept implies that NEITHER view
has preference or precedence over the other. We will therefore NEVER know if He actually
took six standard days, or 15 billion years, or even some other interval of time, to create the
Universe! God might actually have taken two years to create everything. He might have
provided one "time-lens" that made that two years appear as taking Six Days and another that
made it appear to take many billions of years. We will never have any way of actually knowing.
As mentioned above, the critical matter is that the SEQUENCE of events be the same. The
following presentation of Genesis 1, with comments regarding current scientific thoughts
regarding the times of those events, is meant to make the case for this. There appears to be
AMAZING compatibility between the two! Statistically, it represents staggering scientific
proof that the Bible MUST BE true and accurate. There IS the one item that does NOT match
up (the appearance of birds is one position different), but the matching of the sequences is
otherwise quite striking. A mathematical statistical analysis of the comparison of the two
sequences implies that there is far less than one chance in a billion that Genesis 1 could
have been written with the sequence it has, without God's knowledge of the correct
sequence. (Statistics of Genesis 1 - Scientific Approach, the statistical reasoning.) Since science
has only been able to determine the times of these events within the past few decades, the
question arises to scientists: "How can you explain the writing of Genesis 1 over 3,000 years
ago?" No one (except God) knew the correct sequence! How could any human author of that
time know that plants came before animals, or that fishes came before land animals, or that
Light came before everything else?
Apparent Time Discrepancies

An additional observation needs to be mentioned that relates to the time scales involved. There
would seem to be an obvious contradiction regarding time. "Did the year 14,613 BC actually
exist?" People are sometimes distressed that a Six Day Creation, in about 4004 BC (as Bishop
Ussher had calculated centuries ago), seems to have problems of incompatibility with events that
science has determined to have existed prior to that date. There IS a logical explanation!
The actual MEANING of the word "year" or "day" is fundamentally different for Christianity
and science. The two understandings happen to match up almost perfectly now and have
matched up for the past several thousand years, but there was a time when they were very
different. It is probably unfortunate that science and Christianity have chosen to use the same
words for these actually different intervals.
My impression (and that of most of society) is that the scientific time scale is "linear". That
means that each second or minute or day or year has always been of exactly the same intrinsic
length, as described by some repetitive event, such as the rotation of the Earth, or its revolution
about the Sun, or the number of oscillations of atoms of Cesium. In contrast to this linear time
scale of science, the Creation time scale is seen as being non-linear, (at it would appear from that
linear time scale) such as a hyperbolic time scale. (A chart showing such a relationship is below).
A hyperbola has two straight lines called asymptotes that define its limits. Such a scale would
have one asymptote (on the Christian time scale) in 4004 BC and the other asymptote being the
45-degree angle line that describes the identity with the linear scientific time scale. (In this
diagram, the dotted lines represent the asymptotes.)
The 45-degree asymptote of this
hyperbola would mean that our
current year 2000 AD is virtually
identically long in both scales and
it began at essentially exactly the
same moment. This enables an
indistinguishably identical modern
perception of a day or year. Even
2000 years ago, the two time
scales would have been virtually
identical. The distinction between
the two would only have been
significant before about 3900 BC.
(For example, 3900 BC creation
time might have been 3901 BC
scientific time). Because of that
vertical asymptote, from a
Creation perspective, nothing
could have existed prior to that
year (4004 BC), so dates earlier than that (in the Creation time scale) are meaningless. But,
looking at the chart shows that the line goes almost straight downward. If we extended the chard
downward to 1,000,000 BC (scientific), you can see that the line WOULD exist down there,
meaning that such a date has real meaning. If a memorable event happened then, it would be
recorded in the year 4004 BC (creation). Extend the chart even farther down, to one billion years
BC (scientific), and that still matches up to some moment during 4004 BC (creation).
Effectively, this non-linear, hyperbolic time scale would have the effect of "compressing" an
enormous amount of scientific time into a very short period of Creation time. (The author
realizes that this is getting deep!)
Regarding the question posed earlier, there are actually two different answers, depending on
which time scale is being used! In the scientific time-scale, YES, certainly the year 14,613 BC
occurred. In the Creation time-scale, NO, no such year could have existed. No date prior to 4004
BC (creation) has any reality. If something momentous occurred during the "scientific" year
14,613 BC, it would have been recorded as having taken place late in the Sixth Day of Creation
(in 4004 BC or thereabouts).
A technically more correct way of describing the relationship between the two time scales is
represented in the graph here. The Creation time scale would be along the horizontal (X) axis
and the scientific time scale would be along the vertical (Y) axis. A hyperbola is drawn here,
with asymptotes along a vertical axis (X = - 4004) and along a diagonal line (X = Y). This
hyperbola would have an eccentricity of 2.59. (An exponentially shaped curve would also look
very similar.) The 'modern' part of the curve has essentially exactly identical years in both scales
(slope = 1.0).
In recent history (upper right in the graph), the curve is virtually identical to the angled
asymptote, meaning the slope is 1.00000, and a year in one is the same as in the other. But at the
bottom of the graph, all scientific dates much before about 4000 BC all match up to that very
busy Week of Genesis (in 4004 BC on the Creation time scale)! This hyperbolic line is
continuous and always has a one-to-one relationship, so every event that has ever or will ever
happen is represented uniquely by one specific point on that curved line, meaning that there is
one perfectly defined moment in scientific-time and one uniquely defined moment in creation-
time. It is what mathematicians call a real function.
This particular drawing of the graph has greatly exaggerated the separation between the curve
and the asymptotes for clarity. In reality, the angled portion would be virtually identical with the
dotted line asymptote on this graph except in that tiny curved area, and the vertical portion would
appear virtually identical to the vertical dotted line.
So! Did the Universe get Created in a Serious Week of Work about 4004 BC? YES, if we're
talking about the Creation time scale. Did the Universe take billions of years to form? YES,
if we're talking about the scientific time scale. BOTH statements are entirely and equally
true! Matters such as dinosaurs are thus easy to deal with. In the scientific time scale, they
appeared around 225 million years ago and the final ones died out around 65 million years ago.
In the Creation time scale, they appeared during the Sixth Day and died out later on that same
Sixth Day (leaving their fossils and all the rest).
This non-linear premise might actually be somewhat supportable by Genesis. If you think
about it, the line on the graph must get steeper and steeper (higher slope) for really ancient
scientific events. That would imply that the very first creation-day would have matched up to
billions of years, while the second and following days would match up to shorter and shorter
scientific time intervals. The first Day of Genesis only involves creating light, but it appears to
match up with a scientific interval of many billions of years. By the time we get to the Sixth day,
the slope of the line has changed so that (creation) Day only matches up to a small fraction of a
billion scientific years. Shortly after the Creation, the non-linear time-scale curve would go
around its curved part from its nearly vertical section to its nearly 45-degree angle section,
forever getting closer to 45 degrees as time proceeds. A virtually 45-degree line on that graph
today would indicate a virtual identity between the modern time-scales of science and Creation.
This would explain why we see no noticeable difference today between the two time scales.
A scientifically non-linear time scale in the Genesis story might also even be somehow related to
the fact that a lot of people of the Bible lived to around 900 years old! But that's a different
matter and may not have any connection to the matter at hand!
Sequence Analysis of Genesis 1

The following comparison includes interpretations of statements in Genesis 1 that are generally
very similar to the analysis in the famous and respected Gray's Home Bible Commentary.
It also provides footnotes to the Original Ancient Hebrew words, and all their possible English
translations, since some of the English wording is not precise enough for this analysis.

Gen. 1:1 - In the beginning <07225 God <0430 created <01254 <08804 <0853 the heaven <08064 and <0853
the earth <0776.
An introductory statement, which precedes the rest of Genesis 1.
 This might also be a vague reference to a Big Bang event to begin the existence of the
Universe, for when scientists would eventually become capable of comprehending the
possibility of such things. Modern science currently believes that such a Big Bang event
occurred, and various evidence suggests that this event took place about 15 billion years ago.
(Notice that this Parallelism approach also allows a compatibility of Young Earth and Old
Earth Creationists. Whether the Creation sequence took six days or billions of years becomes
a moot point!)
Gen. 1:2
This is a reference to the fact that there was no form or light or anything else. Most Big Bang
theories suggest that there was a brief period that occurred before matter could exist.

Gen. 1:3 - And God <0430 said <0559 <08799, Let there be <01961 <08799 light <0216: and there was
light <0216.
This might be a reference to the creation of the multitude of stars in the Universe. Modern
science would place this as beginning from a few million years after the Big Bang essentially
through the present. Many stars (and therefore many sources of subdued light) existed by 6
billion years ago.
Logically, this seems to be a peculiar first item to create, if you think about it. Ancient people
would probably have expected ground or people to have been created first, then the other
stuff. In ancient times, the sequence of Genesis events must have seemed very strange. Why
plants before animals? Why water before plants? Why fishes before land creatures? Why
light first?
From a scientific perspective, a LOT happened here. Early on, ONLY the element Hydrogen
existed, the very simplest of all atoms. Gravitation caused clouds of this Hydrogen to collect
in large balls. When a ball got extremely large, the weight of all the overlying Hydrogen
squeezed and heated the Hydrogen at the very center. Once that Hydrogen got up above 100
million degrees or so, the Hydrogen atoms were moving so fast (that's what heat actually is,
the speed of atoms moving around) that when they crashed together, they didn't always
bounce off but sometimes fused together, a process we now call nuclear fusion. As a result,
atoms of Helium were formed, the next simplest atom.
Eventually, the Hydrogen fuel would get used up, and the outward going radiation that was
partially supporting the weight of outer layers would essentially stop. This would allow a
further collapse of the size of the star, causing even greater temperatures in its center.
Eventually, with massive stars, the temperatures could get high enough that the new Helium
atoms started fusing together, creating more energy and even heavier atoms in the process,
such as Carbon.
This sort of thing could continue (for the very most massive stars) with ever heavier atoms as
fuel and even heavier atoms as results. At some point, after having therefore created nearly
all the types of atoms from the initial Hydrogen, the star became unstable and blew itself
apart, in something called a nova or supernova. This resulted in all those varieties of atoms
being sprayed out across the Universe. With enough time, the Universe would get cluttered
 with such an assortment of elements and chemicals.
At a later time, a DIFFERENT cloud of Hydrogen, which included a mixed assortment of
these other elements, gravitationally collected to form our Sun, and also our various planets,
including Earth. There is reasonable scientific documentation for these various ideas, and
collectively they are seen as being an explanation of how our incredibly complex Universe,
with all its 92 elements and countless chemical compounds, could have arisen from just
simple Hydrogen, given enough time.
The paragraphs above were an extremely brief presentation of the field of Cosmology, a
reasonably well-founded subject in science. Note that there are some amazing consequences.
Look at your little finger. It is primarily composed of Carbon and Oxygen with many other
elements in small amounts. If Cosmology is correct in the above, then every single one of
those countless billions of atoms of Carbon and Oxygen in your finger were originally fused
together in some extremely remote stars which later supernovaed! The concepts are nearly as
mind-boggling as the Bible's Genesis 1!

Gen. 1:4 - ... and God <0430 divided <0914 <08686 <0996 the light <0216 from <0996 the darkness <02822.

This seems to refer to the creation of the Sun which establishes a clear distinction between
light and darkness. Before the Sun came into existence, a faint level of starlight came from
every direction. Modern scientists believe that this event happened about 5 billion years ago.
Gen. 1:5 (end of First Day)
The author has never seen anyone else ever comment on the fact that the entire First Day of
Creation didn't include anything other than creating Light! Considering how omnipotent God
is, and how much He had yet to do, doesn't it seem that He would have chosen to accomplish
more in the First of the only Six Days He would use? How come nobody has noticed that He
seemed to get very little done on that First Day? This Parallelism concept helps explain this.
From science's point-of-view, that First Day covered about eight or ten billion years! "Just"
creating Light was a lot more involved than we had realized from the Genesis story!
Also, note that right after the Sun was created (separated light from darkness), we have the
end of the First Day. The end of a day would seem to have little meaning if the Sun had not
yet been Created, and so again, God was extremely logical in the sequence!
Gen. 1:6-8
This is somewhat hard to fully understand, but possibly describing the creation of the Earth.

Gen. 1:9 - ... and let the dry <03004 [land] appear <07200 <08735 ...

This clearly indicates that the Earth now existed. Modern science believes this occurred
about 4.55 billion years ago.

Gen. 1:10 - ... and the collection<04723 of waters<04325 He called<07121<08804 seas<03220 ...

Creation of the oceans and seas are completed here. Modern science believes that most of the
moisture came out of innumerable volcanoes, which condensed as rain, to fall and eventually
 fill the seas. Science has now determined that 3.4 * 1021 kg of water has become released
from the Earth's Core and Mantle over the roughly 5 billion years that the Earth has existed.
The current amount of water in the entire Hydrosphere is about 2.4 * 1021 kg. This accounts
for not only the existing water we know of in oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, etc, but also
some additional water which may have escaped into outer space from our upper atmosphere.
It has been determined that there is still around 200 * 1021 kg of water still deep in the Earth's
Mantle. There are far fewer volcanoes erupting now than in the early Earth, but those
volcanoes still bring up new water into the Hydrosphere, and apparently will for a very long
time to come.

With enormous amounts of moisture in the atmosphere, the sky was continuously and
completely overcast with clouds. Light would get through, as on overcast days now, but
actually seeing the Sun or Moon or stars would have been impossible. No oxygen was yet in
the atmosphere, but substantial carbon dioxide had also come up out of the volcanoes.
Science believes this happened about 3-4 billion years ago.

Science believes that the Earth was first formed without any atmosphere either. This had to
result in an interesting situation! We know the distance the Earth is from the Sun, and the rate
that the Sun creates energy to radiate out. It turns out that we can easily calculate the
temperature the Earth would have had to have been (called a Black Body temperature) in
order to radiate away exactly as much energy as it was receiving from the Sun (a necessary
situation). That calculation shows that the Earth would then have been an average of around -
20°C or -4°F temperature! Any water would have soon become ice, and not much else could
ever have happened here! The volcanoes were again the source of several simple natural
gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, so the early Earth atmosphere was unbreatheable.
As the carbon dioxide increased, an effect called the Greenhouse Effect increased the average
temperature of the Earth's surface up to the current +15°C or +59°F average temperature that
is important in enabling life on most of the Earth's surface.

Research regarding the gases that are now coming out of volcanoes in Hawaii show that they
include around 11.61% (by volume) of carbon dioxide and 79.31% (by volume) of water
vapor. If these percentages were approximately true early in the Earth's existence, it would
certainly explain large additions of water, water vapor and carbon dioxide to the earth's
environment, given hundreds of millions of years of volcanic eruptions.

Note that NO oxygen came out of the volcanoes, so no oxygen was in the atmosphere!

Gen. 1:11 - And God<0430 said<0559<08799, Let the earth <0776

bring forth<01876<08686 grass<01877, the
herb <06212 yielding<02232<08688 seed<02233, ...
Plant life was created first, to feed the later animal creatures. First the simpler grasses and
then the more complex seed-bearing plants. Scientists have found evidence of fossils of very
simple and primitive plants to be the oldest of all fossils found, so that they know that plants
came before the later animal creatures. This is estimated to have begun around 3.5 billion
years ago. Modern science also believes that there was very little free oxygen in the
atmosphere at that time. These plants, especially blue-green algae, used the plentiful carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere as an important source material for their photosynthesis, and they
 gave off oxygen as a waste or byproduct. Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction that most
plants can do which is described chemically by (6) CO2 + (6) H2O = C6H12O6 + (6) O2. This
means that carbon dioxide from the air is combined with water to form a complex organic
carbohydrate molecule (glucose) and a bunch of oxygen molecules. This would later be of
crucial importance for all the animals that needed the oxygen in the atmosphere to survive.
Even though the skies were still entirely overcast, sufficient light got through the clouds to
permit plants to grow. Scientific dating of fossils of land plants suggests that they were
prominent on land by about 400 million years ago, after having existed as water borne plants
well before that.
There is yet another important thing that happened to the atmosphere. The Earth is constantly
bombarded by rather strong ultraviolet radiation given off by the Sun. Such radiation seems
to be fatal to nearly all living forms. Therefore, the earliest lifeforms, such as blue-green
algae, could only live under water, where the water protected them from that UV radiation.
They certainly were producing a lot of oxygen as a by-product of their existence, but no land
animals could yet have existed, because of that radiation. This also confirms that fish were
the first of all animals, again confirming what Genesis 1 told us 3300 years ago. After a lot of
oxygen had accumulated in the atmosphere, some of those oxygen molecules were hit by
cosmic rays from outer space, and altered into becoming ozone molecules. As these ozone
molecules accumulated near the top of the Earth's atmosphere, they blocked and absorbed
much of the incoming ultraviolet radiation. This had several consequences, but the most
important to us is that it allowed animals to be able to survive without having to be protected
under the water. So, through a complex but extremely logical process, it would finally be
possible that there be animals on the land (and larger plants too).
Isn't that interesting? Composed around 3,300 years ago, Genesis had told us that
plants came before any animals, and now science has proved why that was true,
because of the animals' need for oxygen that the plants first created. Science is not
confronting Genesis, but supporting it!
For the record, the "uniform evolution" approach that was long popular within science
confronts the first of several complications at this point. At seemingly the same time, a broad
assortment of very different new forms of life all appeared, often referred to as the
"Cambrian explosion." The difficulty is that it seems illogical that a generalized random
process would initiate so many different types of life at around the same time. There is
moderate credibility in this being a problem. However, critics tend to describe it as all being
simultaneous, while ten or twenty million years might have been involved, sufficient time for
millions of generations of lifeforms to grow and possibly evolve. There are several later
examples of the same effect (not mentioned here) that were certainly in shorter time periods,
and definitely represent something that uniform evolutionists need to explain. A substantial
group of researchers have concluded that there were bursts of rapid evolution, within the
otherwise slow and relatively uniform evolution. In any case, the time periods involved are
all so long, millions of years, that a LOT could happen that we might never have any
evidence of. Science often has gaps in its knowledge, some of which gradually get filled in at
later times.

Gen. 1:11 - ... and the fruit<06529 tree <06086 yielding<06213<08802 fruit<06529 after its kind<04327,
whose<0834 seed<02233 [is] in itself, upon the earth<0776 ...
The larger, more complex seed-bearing trees were created next. Modern science thinks that
this began about 430 to 350 million years ago.
Enough fossil evidence of these and all following plants and animals exists, such that
sequences of subtle changes have been found by scientists that suggest a logical progression
of how all these living things would seem to have come about. A fairly continuous fossil
record exists for some species of plants, which suggests that later plants could have
"evolved" from earlier plants adapting to new conditions. This set of scientific
understandings allows scientists to be comfortable with an evolutionary explanation for these
events that they can comprehend in a logical way and that they are comfortable with.
Gen. 1:14-18 - ... to separate day from night, etc.
These clearly refer to the Sun and Moon. But the earlier reference regarding the Sun's
existence (Gen. 1:4) seems to make it clear that these Scriptures are not referring to the
original existence of the Sun and Moon. A possible scientific explanation is that, early on, the
Earth's atmosphere held a very large amount of water vapor or other translucent gases, which
would have contributed to much more cloudiness than we experience today. It is quite
possible that the sky everywhere had been permanently covered by a thick layer of clouds,
obscuring the Sun and Moon from being visible from the Earth's surface. In addition, science
is pretty sure that a lot of volcanic activity was still occurring, which would have kept large
amounts of volcanic dust in the atmosphere. Those things being true, it might have been that
the atmosphere had been forever cloudy. Day and night would be recognizably different, but
actually being able to see the Sun or Moon from the Earth would have been impossible. This
Scripture might be referring to the cloudiness becoming less, as volcanic dust settled and as a
lot of the water vapor in the clouds condensed as rain, so that the Sun and Moon could finally
be seen from the Earth. There is even more logical support for this. As the plants were
removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and replacing it with (transparent) oxygen,
they were reducing the "greenhouse effect" and allowing the atmosphere to become cooler,
adding to the condensation of raindrops, and further clearing the sky of clouds.
This might even offer a suggestion to science regarding extreme cloudiness in that era, which
I have not heard proposed before within the scientific community. The Bible providing
evidence on which science can grow, imagine that!

Gen. 1:20 - And God<0430 said<0559<08799, Let the waters<04325 bring forth abundantly<08317<08799
the moving creature<08318 that hath<05315 life<02416, ...
Fish became numerous in the seas during the Devonian period (390-340 million years ago).
Modern science uses a large amounts of fossil evidence and radioactive dating information to
confidently establish this. These fish could ONLY have come about AFTER the plants had
created great amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and then some of that oxygen had gotten
absorbed into the seas. No fish could live without dissolved oxygen being present in the
water, another nice logical aspect supporting the sequence of Genesis 1.

Gen. 1:20 - ... and fowl<05775 [that] may fly<05774<08787 above<05921 the earth<0776 in the open<06440
firmament<07549 of heaven<08064.
Birds are also preserved in fossil records. Modern science believes that birds seem to have
developed and evolved from the reptiles that crawled out of the oceans. Note: at present,
science believes that birds came AFTER some of the creeping land creatures mentioned in
1:24. This represents the only obvious discrepancy between the sequence of these events as
presented in the story of Genesis and the (incomplete) information and knowledge so far
amassed by modern science. Modern science finds that the multitudes of birds only came
about roughly 65 million years ago, with the oldest known bird fossils are from about 120
million years ago. Archeopteryx, a sort of flying reptile (bird?) existed about 150 million
years ago, and a fairly recently discovered Protoavis may have existed as long as 225 million
years ago. That's still more than 100 million years later than the Genesis story would imply.
One problem for science is that birds tend to be small and small-boned, so fossils are less
likely to form and harder to find!

A side note needs to be interjected here: The text being used here is the Christian translation
in the King James (KJAV) Bible. This is translated from the Original Ancient Hebrew and
then Aramaic and then Greek and then Latin translations. The Jews have their own
translation of the very same original Ancient Hebrew text, which they call Bereshit. The
Bereshit text for Genesis 1 is at ../believe/txo/jewgenes.html

Specifically, Verse 21 reads (translated):

21. God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep,
which the waters brought forth in swarms; and all the winged birds of every kind. And God
saw that this was good. (However, Verse 20 also mentions birds, which confuses things.).

The Jewish text might therefore indicate a sequence where sea creatures were first, THEN
creeping creatures, and THEN the birds. This actually exactly agrees with what science now
believes, and so the match up is absolutely perfect!

It seems also possible that the Bible might have more generally been referring to "flying
creatures" and there were certainly winged (flying) insects by around 300 million years ago.

Gen. 1:23 - (end of Fifth Day)

We tend to overlook that after Five of the Six Days of Creation, there were STILL no living
creature on the land! Nearly everything we normally think of in Genesis occurred in one day,
the Sixth Day. Think about the implications of that. And that it "conveniently" is therefore
compatible with modern scientific thought.
Similar to the comments regarding that only a single thing, Light, was created on the First
Day, please note that only fishes (and birds) were Created in the entire Fifth Day, and that a
great complexity of Creation was kept for the last remaining day of the Six.
Overall, if this scientific perspective is not included, it almost appears that God did very little
on any of the first Five Days! And then Did nearly everything that we think of as Creation in
 the remaining Sixth Day. So the traditional Christian or Jewish interpretation of Genesis 1
seems weak.
These observations would seem mysterious, except for the suggested resolution of the time
scale discrepancy referred to earlier, which not only removes the difficulty, but adds to the
credibility of Genesis from a scientific perspective!

Gen. 1:24 - And God<0430 said<0559<08799, Let the earth<0776 bring forth<03318<08686 the living<02416
creature<05315 after his kind<04327, ...
Science says that the crawling and slithering creatures arose as some types of fish adapted to
life away from the waters. First, small amphibians crawled out of the water, but they never
became dominant species. Later, reptiles developed and multiplied, so much so that the
Mesozoic period of history (230-65 million years ago) is also known as the Age of Reptiles
(of which dinosaurs were a part).

Gen. 1:24 - ... cattle , and the creeping animal<07431, and the beast<02416 of the earth<0776
<0929

after his kind<04327 ...

After a great extinction of reptiles (and dinosaurs) about 65 million years ago, there was no
longer a dominant type of creature on the Earth. This enabled the development of many
varieties of (warm-blooded) mammals, beginning after 65 million years ago. Another side-
note. A lot of people seem to think that all dinosaurs suddenly dropped dead together! That is
NOT what happened! Actually, most of the very large types of dinosaurs had completely
died out millions of years earlier. But there were still plenty around at 65 million years ago.
All science really knows for sure is that by about 63 million years ago, there were no
dinosaurs left alive. So it wasn't like there were millions of dinosaurs on Tuesday and they
were all dead on Wednesday. Two million years could have included maybe 200,000
generations of those dinosaurs, and they might have died out gradually over that period or the
might have died out more at the same time. No one yet knows!

Gen. 1:26-27 - ... Let us make <06213 <08799

man <0120 in our image <06754, after our likeness
<01823
...
Modern science says that this happened within the last 2-3 million years. Eventually,
societies developed, man developed language, tools, weapons and logic, and has come to
dominate over all the earth and its creatures (also mentioned in Gen. 1:26). Since humans
have now gotten to a point of being able to scientifically research their heritage, they find
adequate but subtle evidence that exists that supports the theory that they evolved from lesser
creatures. This assuages their intellectual curiosity. No absolute proof will EVER be
available that that was actually the case (to the exclusion of Biblical Creation), but
extremely convincing evidence exists to support the scientific point-of-view. There will
NEVER be any way of determining whether the Lord did this all in 6 days and thoughtfully
pre-planned for future men's curiosity; or whether He used billions of their years to do it and
necessarily had to describe it in terms of days because of the primitive nature of the intellect
of the Bible's initial readers. Also, the early readers didn't comprehend the full scale of the
Earth and Sun and Universe. They still thought the Earth was flat and couldn't possibly
 move!
Adam and Eve - as the sole source of mankind.
This might seem like a conflict, but it definitely is not. In fact, science would say that ANY
time that a pair of individuals had a "survival advantage" over possible competitors, that pair
will have (genetically similar) offspring that ALSO have that advantage. We might suggest
that the descendants of Adam and Eve had many survival advantages! Intelligence and
manual dexterity, certainly. But it seems very likely that having a Soul, of being able to
understand the difference between right and wrong, AND having the Lord Watching over
them, sounds like really good evolutionary advantages! Gradually, over a LONG amount of
time, science would say that the descendants of this pair would "multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it" exactly as Genesis 1:28 describes.
Note the interpretation we make regarding "in our image" mentioned at the beginning of this
presentation. We feel that a correct interpretation is that God may have earlier used a process
that we now call evolution to develop the grasses, seed-bearing plants, trees, fishes, crawling
creatures and then larger creatures. And that He even continued that to creating
CREATURES that happened to look like us! But they were CREATURES and not MEN. In
Genesis 1:26-27, He "provided a Soul" to Adam, which we believe is what is meant by "in
our image" and not that we necessarily have any physical similarity to God. Given this, all
descendants of Adam and Eve would therefore have Souls, as per a scientific reasoning
regarding genetics. It also makes clear an extreme distinction between humans and any other
of God's creatures which can never be affected by any "evolution" or anything else that
science might discover.
Science has absolutely no way to detect a Soul or to study them or to even confirm that Souls
do or do not exist! So the very special addition that God made in Genesis 1:26-27, in making
mankind unique in having Souls, presents no conflict with science!
There actually are many recent examples of similar evolution things. Several decades ago,
modern medicine virtually exterminated the germs that caused smallpox and tuberculosis,
and the agents that caused polio. Massive usage of antibiotics and other chemicals
accomplished this goal. However, I said "virtually". Out of all the trillions of bacteria killed
by those antibiotics, there were a few, let's say two, that managed to survive the antibiotics.
Science would guess that those two had somehow "mutated", possibly as a result of the
natural cosmic rays that continually bombard us from outer space. In any event, consider the
situation AFTER that massive antibiotic use. Instead of trillions of bacteria having to share
the available food supply, just the two were present. Can you see how they would multiply
very rapidly, with essentially an unlimited food supply? Bacteria reproduce very quickly, in
just a matter of hours, so those two could have had millions and billions of descendants
within a period of months. In other words, the world again soon winds up with the trillions of
tuberculosis-causing bacteria. But, do you see the one difference now? Since all of these
NEW ones are descendants of the antibiotic-resistant two survivors, THEY are also drug
resistant. You may note in current news that the medical community is extremely concerned
about drug-resistant strains of a number of dangerous diseases, including TB. This is the
scientific understanding of why this currently exists, as being a "natural" consequence of
some individuals having a "survival advantage". In the case of TB, the recent cases are
 absolutely untreatable with any known treatments or medicines, so the patients ALWAYS
die, a true catastrophe in the makings, and there is no way to avoid it in the very near future.
Of course, that was NOT humans, and there is the possibility that similar things do not
happen regarding humans, but that is the basis for why science generally believes in "natural
selection". In the event that some individual had a BIG advantage, like those drug-resistant
bacteria that survived and had no remaining competition, the result is called "evolution".
Please note that NO individual "evolves" into anything else, like in horror movies.
Natural selection is a very gradual process that generally takes many generations of
descendants before the result is noticeably different than before. In any case, whether it
actually applies to humans or not, this is the correct explanation of what "natural selection"
or "evolution" actually is.
By the way, there are some Christian leaders who think they are denying science when they
say "You claim that evolution occurs, but you only talk about it happening a long time ago! It
is obviously not true because it is not happening today!" The correct response to that is:
"Natural Selection" (the more correct term for 'evolution') NEVER involves individual
organisms drastically changing, but involves MANY generations to occur. Any Biology
student can grow many generations of common fruit flies and experimenters have long seen
Natural Selection results in countless experiments. If the student exposes a community of
fruit flies to some kind of radiation, most of the flies might die. However, if any survive, and
are fertile, they will be likely to genetically pass along whatever it was that kept them alive!
Their descendants would therefore have a "radiation resistance" as a result of their survival.
There may have only been a few that survived the radiation, but when they (the survivors)
multiply, then all of the living flies would be resistant. There is no "magic" involved; simply
the fact that only survivors can procreate!
The present drug-resistant TB danger represents another proof that it occurs, and that it is
quite natural. Larger animals live so long that a hundred generations of them can easily
involve thousands of years, and so "proof" of Natural Selection in them is far harder to
establish, except through the use of ancient fossils.
This is all brought up here for a reason. Remember those two surviving bacteria that
eventually "replenished the earth"? When science looks at the possibility of evolution
applying to humans, they necessarily see the need for a VERY small number of beginning
individuals. Thus, the concept of evolution virtually INSISTS on the existence of an Adam
and Eve! In BOTH cases, it is agreed that you and I are direct descendants of (probably) two
initial people. Science has no way of giving them names, but the Bible tells us they were
Adam and Eve.
Genesis 4:15-17 - Cain leaving Eden.
Christians and Jews have always been confused as to how Cain could have left Eden (where
the only apparent humans existed) to go to the land of Nod. The Lord even set a mark upon
Cain (15) so that anyone finding him would not kill him. Who could have found him? How
could he have found a wife, and then raised a family?
This combination of Genesis and science gives us a possible answer. Prior to Genesis 1:26-
 27, of making man in our image, there were many creatures populating the Earth. None of
those creatures had SOULS! If science is correct regarding evolution, it could easily be that
some of those creatures might have evolved into human-like beings. (This also offers an
explanation of the fossils of primitive man-forms which have been found.) So, there could
easily have been an existing population of human-like creatures PRIOR to Adam. When the
Lord, in Genesis 1:26-27, made man IN OUR IMAGE, that meant that Adam had a SOUL,
which no creature had ever or will ever possess.
This would have meant that there were two similar-appearing populations, the creatures that
had evolved from the primitive creatures of Genesis 1:24, and the entirely distinct MAN who
had a SOUL. When Cain left Eden, the Lord KNEW that he would later interact with those
"creatures" and He gave him the mark. Nod and the wife and the family and the city then
make sense, while not challenging any aspect of the Genesis story.
Later still in Genesis (look at Genesis 6:1-5) inter-marriage might have been occurring
between the two similar-appearing populations. The "sons of God" then seem to be
describing Adam's descendants, while the "daughters of men" might then be referring to the
man-like creatures that had no Souls. Does it now seem obvious why the Flood was
necessary? How else could the Lord have ensured that ONLY men with SOULS would
populate the future Earth? (These thoughts are obviously speculations, but they are
interestingly logical, better than other explanations for these matters usually seem to be.)
Doesn't all this seem to be amazing as to how the parts seem to fall in place? It is as though the
Bible "predicted" what science would discover 3500 years later, and that science is methodically
confirming the various amazing statements in Genesis, thereby confirming that the Bible
contains information that NO ancient human could have known!

God has provided a way of forever keeping it hidden from us just which time scale actually was
involved and which was for assisting our limited human comprehension. It may even be true that
BOTH of our windows distort the actual time involved. It may have taken Him a year to create
everything, or it may have only taken an instant. He made for a Parallelism of perception, so that
humans would be free to accept EITHER understanding He made available for us, since either is
totally internally self-consistent.
He created some big things but needed to tailor the possible understandings of those things to
terms that both ancient and modern humans could comprehend. His Universe would appear
totally self-consistent to both the Christian believer of the Bible and the scientist, who only wants
to believe in things he can measure and analyze.
Notice that this does NOT mean that mankind is ACTUALLY related to other of God's
creatures. Christians believe that we are distinct and separate from animals, while scientists
believe that we evolved from lower animals. The Parallelism of understandings just allows each
individual the choice of believing whichever viewpoint he or she comes to be most comfortable
with. BOTH are completely and absolutely true! It is actually just more evidence of just how
marvelous our Lord is, to provide this option for us.
This story is still breaking. Over the next several years, science may confirm a very recent and
unexpected amazing finding. Human chromosomes and DNA are known to contain hundreds of
millions of individual bits of information which are passed along from every parent to child.
Scientific research has recently (2000) completed "mapping" each and is now trying to determine
the functions of each. It is called "the Human Genome Project (HGP)." It was unexpectedly
discovered that a relatively small proportion (technically called exons) seems to be actually
needed in passing along the necessary genetic information for creating a new child. In
February, 2001, scientists announced the amazing and surprising finding that fully 98% of
the component nucleotides (many hundreds of millions) seem to be absolutely unnecessary!
These apparently unnecessary sections are technically called "introns". If less than 2% of our
DNA is actually necessary for reproduction, what is that other 98% and why is it there?
In primitive life-forms, similar exons and introns have been studied. In the process of
procreation, a protozoan, Tetrahymena, has some interesting things occur. It turns out that, if the
introns are left IN an intermediate precursor RNA molecule stage, the process of procreation
cannot continue! The intron somehow manages to snip itself out of the sequence and then splices
the loose ends (of the important parts) together to form the functional molecule. This might first
seem to imply that the introns are of no functional purpose whatever.
Some preliminary results of the HGP have suggested that parts of these apparently unnecessary
"introns" in humans appear to be remarkably similar to the DNA found in bacteria and amoebae
and trees! In the February 2001 announcements, scientists confirmed that they found several
hundred sequences that seem to be precisely identical to bacteria DNA. One (of many) scientific
working theory is that each organism forever maintains the DNA (genetic) code and capability of
its predecessor species (in evolutionary development) and just adds on to the DNA string for
newly added adaptations or improvements. That intron self-snipping feature might be its way of
automatically selecting the latest and best gene string for that characteristic.
If this all turns out to be reasonably accurate, then evolution will have been absolutely proven!
Every cell of every person would therefore contain genetic materials from earlier (simpler) life
forms. It might then be theoretically possible to use existing gene-splicing methods to remove
some of the modern genes to allow a life form to be created from the more primitive intron
genetic material. It's hard to even imagine the ethical and moral questions that would arise if
some idiot scientist actually did that. Unfortunately, one probably will, to achieve fame. It seems
more likely that "reputable" scientists would first snip out a LOT of advanced versions, and
might then be able to have bacteria or mold or algae grow from the HUMAN DNA. Such an
experiment seems likely within a very few years. It does not seem that it will be possible to deny
human evolution in the face of such an experiment.
In the case where the results of the HGP actually absolutely prove human evolution, this current
Parallelism presentation may be the only way of maintaining credibility of Genesis / Creationism
in the face of Paleontology / Evolutionism. Even if this research theory turns out to be
correct, it STILL doesn't mean that mankind is related to any other creature; it just means
that the Lord prearranged another detail regarding parallel perceptions of our
environment to enable us to come to that conclusion for the sake of scientific consistency.
We already know that He made our blood and DNA very, very similar to that of some apes; He
left intriguing ancient skeletons that seem to hint at mutual origins. He left all this totally
consistent scientific evidence for the benefit of our intellectual curiosity!
An Additional Thought
If, several thousand years ago, a group of people tried to fake a Bible, and therefore Genesis 1,
they would have had that same dozen or so events to chain together into a believable story for
Genesis. They would have wanted to include references to the creation of earth (land), man,
water, people, the Sun, large animals, small animals, fishes, birds, plants, the Moon, the stars.
If they did actually do this, they did a pretty stupid job of faking it, because the story line really
wouldn't be very believable to people of the time.
The ORDER of events seems really peculiar. Why light before dry ground? Why plants before
animals? Why everything before man (who would need to witness it all to be able to be aware of
it)? Why ocean animals first? Why, even, a WHOLE DAY to create light, while a LOT of things
apparently happened on the Sixth Day?
A plausible fake story wouldn't have had such a sequence. An intelligent faker of the time would
have spun quite a different tale for the Biblical Genesis sequence of events. Many reasonable
sequences seem far more logical than the Genesis story.
But that ancient Bible (including Genesis 1) was written, around 3,300 years ago, as it is
understood today.
Only in the past two hundred years has science started to be capable of recognizing the
(apparently) correct scientific sequence of those events. And they have turned out to be
REMARKABLY similar. One can apply the scientific approach of statistics to the two
sequences. (Statistics of Genesis 1 - Scientific Approach, the statistical reasoning.)
There are several billion different permutations of sequences possible regarding those dozen or
so events. Actually, for the fourteen events included in the descriptions above, there are 14! or
14-factorial possible sequences that were available. Maybe that doesn't sound like a very big
number but 14! is the same as 87,178,291,200. An astounding number of possible storylines that
a faker could have chosen from! A mere storyteller could have selected any of them. Why not
have Adam created first, so he could witness all the rest? Why not Earth first as a logical starting
point? But LIGHT was first! The amazing similarity of Creation and science sequences
confirms that from a scientific statistical point of view, the likelihood that the Bible could
have been faked is probably far less than one in a million. That's a compelling statistically
valid proof that the Bible MUST be what it claims to be, inspired by God himself! The
people of the day didn't have anywhere near enough information available to them to get the
sequence of Genesis events in the correct order unless God was giving guidance! For example,
there is NO chance that people back then could have known that LIGHT preceded everything
else!
As another observation, have you ever noticed how LITTLE of Genesis 1 was involved in
creating mankind? God used the first Five Days in creating Light and the Earth, and the oceans
and plants and the fishes. Even much of the Sixth Day was used up creating all the various
animals. Hardly a sentence is involved in the eventual appearance of Adam. Doesn't it seem, that
if the Bible was faked, that human authors would have spent much of Genesis 1 emphasizing the
special effort and attention that God paid in creating us? It would seem that self-centered,
arrogant human authors would have tried to find some way of getting all of the rest of Creation
out of the way on the First Day, so God could spend the rest of the days concentrating on these
wondrous humans! But that is not the case! It seems to be additional strong evidence that humans
did not write the Bible, specifically Genesis.
Since no human up to less than a hundred years ago had the knowledge to list the various
Genesis events in the "correct" scientific order, and since it just isn't written in the
anthropocentric way that we humans tend to do, there seems to be overwhelming support for the
validity of the Bible being directly from the Inspiration of God. The many additional proofs
offered by others, including historical and archaeological evidence and textual analysis,
collectively make, to me, an overwhelming case for the Bible being directly from God.

The author feels that Duality (or Parallelism) is a compelling resolution to the age-old animosity
between Christians and scientists. In addition, the remarkable sequence of events described in
Genesis 1 seems to present strong scientific, statistical proof of God's existence, and therefore
strongly supports the accuracy and truth of the Bible. Hopefully, as a result of this, some
scientists who have had closed minds regarding Christianity, will see this as evidence that they
should consider looking into Christianity as it could apply in their own lives.

There may be some additional separate applications of the Duality/Parallelism concept.

The Trinity

The analogy presented above, of the building with the small windows on two walls, might also
assist in better conceptualizing the Trinity. Imagine a third window in the roof of that building,
with yet a different access path to it, and you would have three different views of the single
object in the room. It would ACTUALLY be a single object, but it would seem to have three
very different appearances through the three windows. Again, in any specific situation, only
ONE of those three appearances could be seen and it would not be possible to experience more
than one of those three experiences at any specific instant.
This might be a worthwhile approach toward better comprehending the Single existence of God
(One Substance) while simultaneously acknowledging the distinct appearances of the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Three Persons). If this premise is valid regarding the Trinity, the
implication is that it might not be possible to experience more than One of the Three at any one
instant, although the author has no idea how that could be confirmed or challenged. The general
idea is that it could allow a more "physical" conceptualizing of the intrinsically difficult concept
of the Trinity.
In anthropomorphic terms, one view could be where the Being is facing the window, and viewers
would see the Gentle, Kind, Loving face of Jesus looking back at them, so His Wonderful
human-like characteristics would be the prominent perception from that window. From a second
window in an adjoining wall, a profile view of the Being might be discernible. This profile
clearly shows a Stern and Powerful personage, Who seems Mighty and Authoritarian and Strict
yet above all, Just. The view through the very dirty window in the roof is pretty confusing! The
window is so dirty it's hard to see anything really clearly, and all that is visible anyway is the top
of the head of the Being! It's pretty tough to tell much about a person by looking at the top of the
head! We KNOW that this must also be the One and Only Divine Being, and we have chosen to
describe what we see as the helpful, supportive, and inspirational Holy Spirit.
This conceptualization confirms that there is only One Divine Being, God, while also
recognizing that we might perceive Him in any of Three very distinct ways, the Godhead of the
Trinity.
The author has written an essay specifically based on this approach on better understanding the
Trinity Concept in Christianity - A New Perspective
../public/trinity2.html
Compatibility of Faiths

The analogy presented above, of the building with the small windows, might also conceivably be
applied to help better conceptualize a tolerance of the beliefs among Denominations and Faiths.
Where there has traditionally been great animosity over differences of beliefs, it might hopefully
be possible to develop positive and constructive attitudes based on the many similarities in
beliefs. In our building analogy above, various Protestant Christian denominations and
Catholicism and Orthodoxy might all be represented by small windows in various parts of the
ONE wall that Christians have access to.
From all of these Christian- wall windows, the central feature in the room is always immediately
obvious: Jesus! In addition, we can see in the room an assortment of people and objects and
concepts: the Bible, Moses, Abraham, the Ten Commandments, Adam, Mary, etc. From all of
the windows on our (Christian) wall, Jesus is clearly central and prominent, as He is sitting
facing us, so we can see the gentleness and kindness and love expressed in His face.
Roman Catholics might be looking through a window where Mary happens to be especially near,
and so she seems especially prominent.
When Muslims look in, through a window on a separated wall, they might see the profile of the
Being as being an impressively Powerful looking Allah. Because of this viewpoint, Allah and
His obvious power and might and authority is clear to all Muslims.
When Jews look in, through a window on yet another wall, they might see yet another profile
view of the Being in the room. They also see a Powerful and Stern and Just Being, who they
recognize as YHWH or God.
The room would ACTUALLY have the same contents, of course, but it would SEEM to have
very different appearances through the various windows. Again, through any one specific
window (denomination or religion) the view seen can be absolutely self-consistent. This
would certainly reassure the group that viewed through that window that THEY were the ones
that were seeing the ABSOLUTE truth, and they would then likely (erroneously) conclude that
the viewers through the other windows were necessarily wrong. This can certainly explain how
so many different Christian groups EACH think they alone have the Ultimate Truth. And how
Jews and Muslims and others similarly KNOW that they alone understand the Absolute Truth.
All of the windows on all of the walls would see God/Father/Allah/Jehovah/YHWH/Jesus,
Moses, the Ten Commandments, Abraham, Adam and many others. There would just be great
differences in perceptions from the various small windows. Fortunately, just outside each of the
windows is available a Book (Koran, Torah, Bible), which helps the viewers of that window to
better understand what they are seeing. Unfortunately, the Books are sometimes somewhat
general and all the windows are very dirty, so it's generally hard to tell precisely what is going on
inside. The viewers at each window will have the natural tendency to "fill in the blanks"
regarding things they don't fully comprehend, so they innocently make certain assumptions in
trying to understand what they see. This allows some variation in the understandings to develop
in those viewers. Each window's viewers would try to figure out exactly what they were seeing.
They would certainly come to a set of conclusions based on that evidence. As before, the viewers
at each window would KNOW they are right, and, by that same innocuous assumption, would
conclude that viewers at all other windows MUST NECESSARILY be wrong. In each case,
these differences of understanding would always be construed as "distortions" and errors in the
others' beliefs, by each specific group.
This might be a worthwhile approach to explore toward developing better compatibility (or at
least tolerance) between Denominations and Faiths. This approach suggests that EACH
Denomination and Faith is ENTIRELY correct and proper, for the situation of looking
through that specific window. However, it also suggests that all of the OTHER Denominations
and Faiths are ALSO ENTIRELY correct and proper, because of their looking through their
different windows. You can probably see how this represents another example of a resolution
similar to Einstein's. Even though the various Denominations and Faiths have elements that are
definitely NOT compatible with each other, EACH is an internally self-consistent AND
CORRECT method of Worship and Prayer for the One and Only God/Jehovah/Father/Allah.
Essentially, each of these belief systems can be seen as a parallel, equally valid method of
worshipping God and All that He is.
This premise therefore fully supports the absolute validity of YOUR
Denomination/Faith/religion. It only points out an error of assumption, in that by YOUR being
right, all others are automatically wrong! This discussion is meant to show that that assumption
could be incorrect. As long as each Denomination/Faith Worships and Prays to
God/Jehovah/Father/Allah/Jesus (and not some mortal individual who is considered a Prophet),
EACH such group is ALSO following a correct and proper and valid (but different) course.
Historically, it has always been difficult to see compatibilities between different beliefs.
Individual differences are often hard to quantify and fully comprehend. It has traditionally been
much easier to just dismiss opposing beliefs as valueless. It is hoped that this new perspective
might open channels of communication between different Denominations and Faiths, such that
they begin to look for and build on their similarities rather than destroy based on their
differences.
The author has written an essay specifically directed toward the Compatibility of Faiths based on
this Parallelism approach. It is at: Compatibility Among Christianity, Muslims, Jews.
../public/compat2.html
This very broad presentation is offered as seeds for further intellectual investigation and
exploration. There would appear to be even other religious applications of Duality or Trinity
understandings of apparently incompatible concepts. However, a caution is in order! This
approach is not a carte blanche situation to blindly be applied to every mutually incompatible
situation. For example, it is clearly inappropriate for the earlier "head" and "tail" of a coin. It
may or may not be of value in such subjects as the Humanity / Divinity of Jesus while He walked
the Earth.
It is important to keep in mind that, in the entire history of mankind, we presently only know of
one situation where this Duality has been scientifically proven to exist, that of light being both
particle and wave. Therefore, it might be an extremely rare circumstance, or it might be such an
obscure concept as to be generally unnoticed, or our level of intelligence and comprehension
may just be lower than we would like to think. It might easily be that Duality does NOT actually
apply to a Compatibility of Faiths, for existence. The concept is presented as a possibility that
seems to merit further study.
An interesting irony exists in this premise. Let's say that there is some truth in the Parallelism
concept. If that is so, then a whole new approach to a wide range of religious concepts, and
possibly life-concepts might open up. And it would have all began with Einstein's insights on
LIGHT! For a second time, LIGHT might represent the very first step in a Genesis of
understanding! (But, if Duality is shown to be meaningless, ignore that last thought!)
Hopefully, there are some useful truths contained within this essay and this premise. Hopefully,
its effect might lessen the animosity between Christians and scientists and others, where mutual
respect might build. That situation should enable dialogues, which might result in deeper respect
and understanding and Faith for all of us.
Given that this essay was written by a mortal human, it is not likely to be perfectly and totally
correct. However, hopefully it will offer a foundation for others to build on, to form a solid
framework where Christians and scientists and others will be able to combine their efforts and
Peace will be a result.
Potential Value

Several possible areas seem to exist where this Parallelism premise might be of benefit:

 Christianity and individual Christians can confidently support and maintain

absolute and total belief in the uniqueness of the human Soul, regardless of
whatever scientific research ever finds in the future. Absolutely rock-solid Faith in
Christianity and in the Bible can be confidently maintained, regardless of what science
may ever prove.
Even if genetics some day absolutely proves evolution to be true, this Duality/Parallelism
approach still enables total belief and support for Christianity and Jesus and the Bible as being
absolutely true, even while acknowledging and welcoming the genetic research that appears to
say otherwise!

 We might feel able to have increased personal respect for each other. This would
hopefully result in increased communication and increased learning and knowledge and
 understanding for all of us.

 Individual Christians might better embrace science and its accomplishments,

without having to weaken their Faith in the process.
It is not actually necessary to concede matters such as a Creation time scale just because science
has absolutely proved that far greater time intervals have occurred.

 Individual scientists might be more willing to look into the potential personal value
of Christianity and Salvation.

 Christian schools and colleges (and even some public schools) might come to realize
that they could teach "full science" without endangering any Christian beliefs. This
would then eliminate the disadvantage that their students now later have in trying to get
employment in any areas related to science.
Finally, this essay has continued a long-standing tendency of people in anthropomorphizing God.
God is (probably) not made of muscle and bone, and it is somewhat inappropriate to discuss Him
as though He is. The building analogy and the parallel paths concept have been presented and
discussed in ways that were meant to clarify concepts, not to accurately portray the true
appearance or essence of God. This Duality/Parallelism perspective actually allows any and all
such speculation to continue in other authors, but it is intentionally presented as NOT
specifically promoting any specific religious belief. Yes, it would be wonderful if a reader
seriously considers Christianity as one's Faith. However, this presentation is meant to apply
equally for any Protestant Denomination and for Roman Catholics and for those of Orthodox
beliefs.
Important Note: Someone reading this essay might conclude that this approach allows a
heretical carte blanche attitude where absolutely anything could be believed and still be
compatible with Christianity and with science. No. As suggested in the Genesis comparison, time
scales could appear different but the SEQUENCES of events must be compatible. If the Bible
would have said that the Flood occurred AFTER Jesus was on Earth, that would be a claim that
could be scientifically proven wrong. (On a related matter, there are investigators today who try
to match up Creation and scientific dating, and have concluded that the Flood occurred during,
for example, the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt. They then speculate on why many animals and
civilizations clearly survived. Such investigators would realize that such apparent problems did
not exist, once they recognize the two different dating schemes.)
There are other logical restrictions as well that also must still apply. The claim being made here
is that EACH of Christianity and science is internally self-consistent and logical. If any
scientist or Christian or anyone else should attempt to make a claim that can be proven to violate
such sequential time orders or the other basic logical threads, that claim could not be true. The
discrepancy regarding the first existence of birds represents that sort of situation. If science can
some day prove irrefutably that birds appeared very late, then this premise has some serious
problems in that area.

First Fully Developed February, 1989,

First Published on Web: July 8, 1997,
Revised and updated regularly since.

Carl W. Johnson, Pastor,

A Christ Walk Church
Christian Minister
and
Theoretical Physicist
Physics Degree from University of Chicago